Ukrainian Hungarians turned out to be a stumbling block between Kiev and Viktor Orban

In the village of Bodalovo, the clocks in almost every house are set according to Budapest time, The Guardian reports. Televisions are tuned to M1, Hungary’s main government-controlled news channel, which shows the world through the eyes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Hungarian is spoken on the street, in church and at school.

And yet Bodalovo is located in the far western corner of Ukraine. This is one of the many villages in the Transcarpathian region almost entirely populated by ethnic Hungarians. And with Orban threatening to veto plans to begin Ukraine’s EU accession talks next week, Ukraine’s small Hungarian community is now in the spotlight.

Over the years, Transcarpathia changed hands many times, but for centuries it was inhabited by a Hungarian population. Since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, local Hungarians have had a difficult relationship with their homeland.

Unlike almost all other parts of Ukraine, many people here feel little connection to the military events raging in the east of the country.

One villager said he admires Orban and Vladimir Putin, whom he considers a “real man” who opposes the “gay and transgender lobby” in the West. And he called Zelensky a “clown,” writes The Guardian.

There are fears in Kyiv that the Hungarian community in the west risks becoming a diminished reflection of the Russian-speaking community in the east, with a hostile foreign power using concerns about their rights as a pretext to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. Orban is the European leader who remains the friendliest to Putin, betting on a possible Russian victory, meeting Putin in China in October and frequently calling on the West to stop military aid to Kyiv, The Guardian recalls.

For many Hungarians, resurgent Ukrainian national pride risks forced integration of their community. “We are citizens of Ukraine, but we want to be able to speak our native language. We are not tourists here,” says Zoltan Babyak, mayor of Beregovo, a Hungarian-majority town of 25,000 people.

A dispute over the linguistic and other rights of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia has poisoned relations between Kiev and Budapest for years, as Orban’s nationalist government poured money into the region, offering financial subsidies to local Hungarians as well as passports that are technically illegal in Ukraine. Newly-minted Hungarian citizens tend to overwhelmingly vote for Orban’s Fidesz party in elections.

Hungarian state television often complains about repression against Hungarians in Ukraine. Ildiko Orosz, rector of the Hungarian Language Institute in Beregovo, accused the Ukrainian government of exercising power in a “communist, fascist” way. “Only Hungary stands behind us,” she said in a speech in Budapest in 2018.

As The Guardian acknowledges, despite this harsh rhetoric, complaints about language rights are not entirely unfounded, and European bodies have repeatedly criticized Ukraine for its policies towards minority languages, especially after the passage of a law in 2017 that restricted the use of languages ​​other than Ukrainian. – a step aimed at reducing the influence of the Russian language, which is used in Ukraine. The Hungarian and Romanian communities were also affected.

Ukraine’s parliament is debating legislation Friday that addresses many of Budapest’s concerns over language rights, part of an agreement aimed at easing the EU accession process. This will allow schools in Hungarian regions to teach all subjects in Hungarian, with the exception of Ukrainian, literature and history.

But just as Ukraine is trying to do what Budapest has been asking for years, Orban appears to have moved the needle, threatening to block Ukraine’s entry into the EU anyway.

David Pressman, the U.S. ambassador in Budapest, said he has repeatedly offered various Hungarian officials “at the highest levels” assistance in dealing with the Ukrainian government on minority issues.

Transcarpathia is one of the poorest regions of Ukraine, despite the fact that it is on the threshold of the EU. “This city has existed for 970 years, and imagine, we have never been able to build a normal sewer system,” said Babyak, blaming the central government in Kyiv for a lack of funds. He said that only 60% of households in Beregovo have access to a centralized sewerage system, and none of the surrounding villages have it.

Soviet-made Ladas, decaying apartment buildings and the battered shells of former industrial complexes dot the landscape of Transcarpathia. Some of the only smart buildings are those that were renovated with Budapest money.

Transcarpathia is the only Ukrainian region that has not suffered from Russian missile attacks since the beginning of the conflict, and Beregovo is closer to Vienna, Venice and Berlin than to the front line in eastern Ukraine, The Guardian emphasizes.

In several Hungarian villages where the majority of the population lives, people said that no one had been mobilized to take part in the conflict against Russia. “They tried, but people find ways to avoid it: either they pay on the spot, or they just sneak across the border into Hungary and run away,” said one resident of the village of Bodalovo.

The conflict only accelerated the already rapid process of flight of Hungarians from Transcarpathia, their number decreased from 150 thousand people at the time of the 2001 census to approximately 80 thousand currently. Three decades ago, the Hungarian-language school in the village of Borzhava had 30 children a year, said deputy director Hanna Hal. Now there are nine people in the first class, and three in the second and third classes.