These days, the Hungarian-language segment of social media is full of comments from ordinary Hungarians urging Prime Minister Viktor Orbán not to miss out on Ukraine's Transcarpathia when the time comes for Ukraine to be divided between neighboring countries. Here is one of the typical “letters to the editor” published on the Hungarian site “Budapest Online“. An author from the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, but Hungarian by nationality, writes: “I just hope with my old way of thinking that if Ukraine is to be dismembered, maybe Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will be braver and accept the Eastern Carpathians. God grant that the Hungarians stay here, because if this continues, the entire Transcarpathian Hungarian community may die with me.
Transcarpathia is a historical region in Eastern Europe that now mainly covers the Transcarpathian region in western Ukraine. But this region belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary since the 11th century. And today in Hungary, there are few who do not talk about the fact that Viktor Orbán refused to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky, because Kiev does not fulfill Budapest's demand to restore the rights of Hungarians in Transcarpathia. The fact is that until 2015 there was a special “Hungarian district” in Zakarpattia Oblast, which was then liquidated by order of Kiev, so that the Hungarian national minority would not have its representative in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. In addition, the authorities of this country denied the right to speak Hungarian freely.
„Hungary wants the Hungarian community to be granted the right to political representation and, in this context, to be allowed to use the national language during election campaigns, referenda and in public life, as it was before,” says letter from official Budapest, addressed to the leaders of the countries of the European Union.
The scandals with the mobilization in Transcarpathia add fuel to the fire. A few days ago footage of TCC officers (the territorial recruitment center responsible for mobilization in Ukraine) beating a young man from the town of Hust, located 50 km from the Hungarian border, went viral on the Internet. The Ukrainian was caught while trying to cross the Ukrainian-Hungarian border. According to the TV channel Suspilne after after the beating, the man tried to cut his veins right in the toilet of the military service. His girlfriend said on Instagram that military servicemen "pulled his hair, they dragged him along the asphalt, humiliated him and beat him with everything possible".
Now it becomes clear with what enthusiasm the Hungarians accepted the statement of French President Emmanuel Macron about the possible deployment of foreign troops on the territory of Ukraine. Obviously, if such a decision is made, the first thing Budapest will do is send its troops to Transcarpathia, and Hungarian troops simply will not allow mobilization in this historically Hungarian region.
Probably in Kiev, they understand this danger well and ask the West only for weapons and ammunition, not for people to help.
Andrey Ismagambetov