Does Hungary Covet Ukrainian Territory?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

When people worry about Hungarian irridentism – the desire to incorporate ethnic Hungarians living in countries adjoining present-day Hungary into the country – they usually think of Hungarian minorities in Serbia, Slovakia, and especially Romania.

These countries contain large Hungarian populations, who have long lived in these regions, because they were for centuries part of a much larger Hungarian kingdom.

Hungary lost nearly two-thirds of its territory after the First World War and some Hungarians still wish to regain some of it. The current nationalist Hungarian government of Prime Minister Victor Orban has made no secret of its desire to, at the least, provide protection to these minorities.

One country that rarely comes up in these discussions is Ukraine, but there too a small area in the far west of the country, Zakarpattia Oblast, has a Hungarian population of about 156,000. This is historically known as Transcarpathian Ruthenia, a poor, mostly rural area on the western side of the Carpathian Mountains.

In the area along the Ukrainian border with Hungary, in the Tisza River valley, Hungarians form the majority. Does Hungary covet them?

Last November, Orban went to a soccer match wearing a scarf depicting some Ukrainian territory as part of Hungary. Ukrainian media showed images of Orban meeting a Hungarian player while wearing a scarf which the outlet Ukrainska Pravda said depicted a map of “Greater Hungary,” including territory now part of the neighbouring states of Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine.

“The promotion of revisionism ideas in Hungary does not contribute to the development of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations and does not comply with the principles of European policy,” stated Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko. He demanded a rejection of any Hungarian claims on Ukrainian territory.

Orban did not directly address the controversy over the scarf. “Soccer is not politics. Do not read things into it that are not there,” he replied. “The Hungarian national team belongs to all Hungarians, wherever they live!”

Earlier that month, there had been another tense moment. On Nov. 11, Polish Independence Day, Laszlo Toroczkai, president of the Hungarian far right Mi Hazank (Our Homeland) Movement, posted a note on Twitter calling for a “common Polish-Hungarian border.”

He attached a 1939 photo showing a Polish and a Hungarian soldier shaking hands at the then Polish-Hungarian boundary at Verecke Pass. Today, the area belongs to Ukraine, and is one of the most important passes of the inner eastern Carpathian Mountains. Nikolenko issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to condemn the desire to revise state borders.

The two countries have repeatedly clashed in recent years over what Hungary has contended are curbs on the right of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine to use their native tongue, especially in education, after Ukraine passed a law in 2017 restricting the use of minority languages in schools.

Orban, a proponent of “illiberal democracy,” cultivates his own brand of revanchist nationalism, and has even raised suspicion that he might one day attempt to reclaim Hungarian lands in Ukraine.

But the Ukrainians are also not blameless. About 40 per cent of Ukrainians consider Hungary to be an “enemy nation,” according to a survey conducted by the Ukrainian polling company Rating last October.

That same month, officials in Mukachevo, a half-hour drive from the Hungarian border and known as Munkacs in Hungarian, dismantled a large statue of a turul, a falcon-like bird from Hungarian mythology. This certainly ruffled some feathers in Budapest.

Hungarian Secretary of State for National Policy Janos Arpad Potapi said it was regrettable that “in the midst of war, the city’s leadership finds it as their priority task to tear down a monument that is a symbol of local and Transcarpathian Hungarian identity.”

Tensions between Budapest and Kyiv, which share a 137-kilometre border, have certainly intensified since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Orban’s relatively friendly relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin has not gone unnoticed.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Orban have clashed publicly, with Zelensky accusing the Hungarian of callous indifference to the suffering of Ukrainians.  

In March 2022, one month into the war, tensions burst into the open when Zelensky scolded Orban for his refusal to impose sanctions against Moscow while Russia bombarded Mariupol. In Hungarian elections held a month later, Orban cited Zelensky as an “opponent,” along with “Brussels bureaucrats.”

Why this stance? When Russia invaded Ukraine, Orban was presented with two choices: to walk a tightrope between Western and Eastern interests or stand with Europe in its support for Ukraine. He chose the former and has spent the past year criticizing the European Union’s role in the war whilst calling for “peace.”

Hungary depends on cheap Russian oil and gas, which in turn allows Orban to keep energy prices low and win votes. “We will keep our economic relations with Russia, and this is what we propose to our allies as well,” Orban stated during an address in Budapest on Feb. 18.

Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjarto, who has previously complained that Ukrainian “hatred against Hungarians continues to be incited at the central government level,” was the only EU foreign minister missing from a video the other ministers made Feb. 20 in Brussels in support of Ukraine.