Weekly newsletter

A Hungarian man residing in Somogy County has been charged with illegal recruitment by the Somogy County Prosecutor’s Office. The man also joined paramilitary armed units operating illegally in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

After the creation of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, breakaway territories formed in southeastern Ukraine in April 2014, the man decided to travel there and fight, even with weapons, to restore communism and the Second Soviet Union.

In the autumn of 2014, he arrived in Luhansk through Russia, where he carried out additional work (loading weapons and maintaining combat equipment) at military bases for paramilitary units in the breakaway region.

Ipsos Survey: 90% of Hungarians Say Hungary Should Avoid Military Involvement in War
Ipsos Survey: 90% of Hungarians Say Hungary Should Avoid Military Involvement in War

This is the highest ratio among the surveyed countries. The opinion that “the problems of Ukraine are none of our business and we should not interfere” also prevails.Continue reading

In July 2015, he was in Donetsk, where he also participated in a month of military training with the armed unit of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and then under a new contract as an armed guard with a rifle battalion of the separatist units. He worked there until 2016, but became disillusioned with the activities of the illegal paramilitary armed forces and volunteered to work for the Ukrainian authorities.

The man has also been prosecuted in Ukraine, where he was charged with participation in an armed group not authorized by law, so the Hungarian authorities could only act against him after the Ukrainian proceedings were completed.

After protracted legal assistance from abroad, the documents of the investigation finally arrived at the Somogy County Prosecutor General’s Office in April 2022. In the indictment submitted to the Kaposvár Court, the prosecutor’s office proposed a suspended prison sentence against the accused.

Source: Telex, Prosecution Service of Hungary

Featured image: A separatist gunman wearing a mask at a checkpoint on the arrival of a Red Cross truck carrying victims of a Ukrainian military plane IL-76 shot down by pro-Russian separatists near Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, in the village of Karlivka, near Donetsk, June 18, 2014. Photo by MTI/EPA


Array
(
    [1536x1536] => Array
        (
            [width] => 1536
            [height] => 1536
            [crop] => 
        )

    [2048x2048] => Array
        (
            [width] => 2048
            [height] => 2048
            [crop] => 
        )

)