“Kyiv’s Acceptance of Budapest as Mediator Would Mark the Restoration of Trust”

According to a non-representative poll of Kárpáti Igaz Szó, the readers of the Transcarpathian Hungarian paper are not optimistic about Ukrainian-Hungarian relations. The poll asked whether the meeting of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Kyiv could bring a breakthrough in bilateral relations.

As reported by Hungary Today, Viktor Orbán met the Ukrainian president in Kyiv on the first leg of his so-called peace mission. The two leaders jointly announced that they had agreed to work on a bilateral relations agreement that would solve common problems.

However, the poll of the Transcarpathian paper found that 78% of readers do not expect relations between Hungary and Ukraine to normalize in the foreseeable future. Only nine of those who answered the question were confident of a quick and positive resolution of the problems.

András Kosztur, a Transcarpathian-born researcher at the XXI. Század Institute was interviewed on the subject by Kárpáti Igaz Szó. “The greatest benefit for the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia would undoubtedly be an improvement in relations between the two countries if Ukraine were to restore the rights of the community that it enjoyed before the educational and linguistic reforms, in line with its stated intentions,” the expert said. The researcher recalled that this could also be of crucial importance for the restoration of trust between the two countries, since

in recent years the deterioration of Hungarian-Ukrainian relations has been mainly caused by disputes over the situation of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia.

He added that “part of the restoration of minority rights has already been achieved in several steps, thus even if the problems affecting the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia were to be resolved quickly, we could be talking about the final stage of a long process.”

The expert noted that

there is also the difference in the two countries’ positions on the war, also a cause for mutual mistrust.

However, the latest meeting could bring an improvement in this area, as “the parties were able to present their points of view openly and face to face.”

“In terms of the Ukrainian-Hungarian bilateral relationship, it could be significant whether Kyiv accepts Hungary as a potential mediator, as this would indeed be a sign of restoring trust,” he said. The Ukrainian leadership is so far reluctant to do so, but only those who have maintained channels of communication with both sides can act as mediators, the researcher concluded.

Via Kárpáti Igaz Szó, Featured image: MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán