The release in Hungary of several Ukrainian prisoners of war, held by the Russian armed forces, has once again opened a rift in the relations between Budapest and Kyiv, particularly tense since the beginning of the war due to the obstacles of Viktor Orbán's Government in the successive rounds of economic sanctions by the European Union against Moscow.
As the last incident reminds, the attitude of the Hungarian Executive towards the Russian invasion has not only to do with the openly pro-Russian positions of Orbán, but with ethnic and territorial conflicts that go back to 1920, when it was signed the Treaty of Trianon, which dismembered the former Great Hungary and left Hungarian minority communities in several neighboring countries.
The war has revived tensions. Without mediating prior communication with Kyiv, on June 9, 11 Ukrainian prisoners of war, but ethnically Hungarian, originally from the eastern region of Transcarpathia, bordering Ukraine, where the community numbers around 150,000 people, arrived in Hungary by surprise. It is possible that they have Hungarian nationality, since since 2010 Budapest has granted passports to thousands of citizens residing in Ukraine, Romania and Serbia.
Although the Hungarian executive assures that he has had no role in the arrangements, made officially by the Hungarian charity service of the Order of Malta and the Russian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitró, claims that the purpose of the "secret operation" was none other than to strengthen the figure of the Hungarian leader. "There was only one goal: Orbán had to show Hungarians inside and outside Hungary that he is the only one who defends them."
After being asked about the conflict, the European Commission has been critical of the way in which Budapest has managed the operation, in which, contrary to what the law provides, it has not involved the International Red Cross. "It is very important that the Hungarian authorities involved and active in the case explain to the Ukrainian partners what happened, how, what role Hungary played in it, who was involved and who was not, and how it was handled," he said the spokesman for Foreign Affairs, Peter Stano.
This week, according to the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Péter Szijjártó, three of the eleven prisoners released from Russia have been able to return to Ukraine. Technically, from the moment they leave the country where they were held they cease to be prisoners of war and Budapest claims to have no control over them. They are "free" to return to Ukraine, if they wish, they say. The Ukrainian authorities disagree and say they are isolated, without access to consular assistance.
Improving the protection of minorities is one of the seven points of the European Commission's recommendation to Ukraine to achieve the goal of opening EU accession negotiations at the end of the year. According to the oral assessment that was presented yesterday to the European Foreign Ministers in Stockholm, it is one of the chapters that Kyiv still does not fulfill and in which more efforts are required. The matter always appears in the list of grievances that the Hungarian Government presents every time something related to Ukraine is negotiated in the EU or NATO.
A year before the beginning of the Russian invasion, Budapest warned that it would veto Ukraine's access to the Alliance until it repealed the law that restricts the use of minority languages - including Hungarian - in the education, legislation that has been condemned by the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe.
At the beginning of the year, the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs called on the Ukrainian Government to improve the treatment of the minority in the Transcarpathian Oblast, where he claims that there have been "concentrated" attacks against the community.
Since the beginning of the war, the Hungarian Government has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and sent humanitarian aid to the country, but has remained steadfast in its decision not to send weapons and has put sticks in the wheels of all decisions adopted by the EU against Moscow, despite the fact that finally, after obtaining some concession, it has always given in. This week he gave the go-ahead to the adoption of the eleventh round of economic sanctions and, according to diplomatic sources, is expected to lift the veto on Monday to increase funds from the European Peace Facility, the instrument which finances the shipment of weapons to Ukraine.
