The expulsion is an answer to the Kyiv government's allegations of spying.Continue reading
Due to the events of the past few days, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade cancelled the Hungarian-Ukrainian expert meeting on Hungarian minority rights in Transcarpathia scheduled for Monday.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, Levente Magyar stated that on April 29, he held talks with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna in Budapest with the aim of giving new impetus to the series of bilateral negotiations aimed at settling the native language rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, which had stalled in the previous months.
At the meeting, they agreed to resume work at expert level on May 12, he noted. However, he added, the Monday meeting was cancelled on Saturday evening because he considered that
the events of the past few days in Hungarian-Ukrainian relations do not allow for a good-faith, constructive discussion on such an important and sensitive issue as minority rights.”
“The fact that on Friday a ‘counter-intelligence operation’ was carried out in Transcarpathia on the basis of accusations of espionage, that the Ukrainian side immediately made public in the media – all this three days before a crucial meeting – calls into question the sincerity of the intention to settle outstanding issues,” the State Secretary stressed.
Let us see what happens in the coming days. For our part, we remain ready for dialogue,”
he concluded his post.
As reported by Hungary Today, last Friday Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) uncovered an alleged Hungarian military intelligence network spying in western Ukraine. Later that day, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced that they had expelled two Ukrainian spies working under diplomatic cover at the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest, and stressed that “the government will no longer tolerate Kyiv’s continuous discrediting actions against Hungary.”
Zoltán Kovács, State Secretary for International Communication, later shared a video on X of the arrest of an alleged Ukrainian spy in downtown Budapest on Friday evening. “The middle-aged individual had previously operated under diplomatic cover, but no longer holds official status. Following clarification of the situation, authorities expelled him from Hungary the same night,” he wrote.
‼️Yesterday evening, Hungarian counterterrorism forces (TEK) detained a Ukrainian national in downtown Budapest. The man was subject to an entry and residence ban by the National Directorate-General for Aliens Policing due to espionage.
The middle-aged individual had previously… pic.twitter.com/NmRIud2lbD
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) May 10, 2025
József Horváth, head of the Sovereignty Protection Research Institute and security policy expert, touched on the issue on Kossuth Radio, pointing out that
Hungary, the Hungarian government and the Prime Minister himself are in the crosshairs of Ukrainian intelligence services.”
Since the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian leadership has also “put the secret services on the battlefield, to the extent that they carry out assassinations, including in Moscow, and on the other hand, they carry out influence and disinformation operations, including against Hungary,” he said
“A well-functioning secret service puts the interests of its country first. In a federal system, there are areas – counter-terrorism, nuclear, chemical and biological proliferation, or the fight against organized crime – where cooperation is excellent, but there are also areas where the services are at odds with each other,” he noted.
Allies also want to know what the other thinks or even “pick up the tab” on each other’s politicians, he explained. He recalled that from time to time, Russian disinformation operations aimed at destabilizing the Western alliance system appear, suggesting the transfer of Ukrainian territory to Poland, Romania, or Hungary.
Hungarian governments, however, have been consistent since the fall of communism and have not made any territorial claims against neighboring countries, he pointed out. During the break-ups of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, they did not embark on any “adventurist actions” either, but sought to help the Hungarians beyond the borders to defend their interests and reunify the nation by other means, the expert stressed.
In his opinion, the Ukrainian secret services saw the time as ripe to bring to the surface the tensions that have existed between the two countries for years, and use this “spectacle” to incite their own population against Hungary, and even more dangerously, against the Hungarians of Transcarpathia.
He said that a mutual give-and-take had started between the two countries. Hungary has shown that it is willing and able to defend its own national interests, he added. The Hungarian secret services also have substantial information on the hostile activities of the Ukrainians that they can bring to light, he said. At the same time, the expert considers it dangerous that there are Ukrainian politicians who portray all Transcarpathian Hungarians as potential spies, raising the question of collective guilt.
Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Soós Lajos