"Before the war, we dismantled the network of Russian agents in Transcarpathia, which is why there were no anti-Hungarian provocations in Transcarpathia," Viktor Mikita, the Governor of Transcarpathia, said.Continue reading
This is the first time since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war that a missile attack has hit the Transcarpathian region, where Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority. The missiles struck the small town of Volóc (Volovets) about a hundred kilometers from the Hungarian border. An electric substation and a railway station were hit.
Volóc in Transcarpathia is nearest to the Ukrainian-Hungarian border crossing of Chop-Záhony, 115 kilometers from the border. There were two air-raid alerts on Tuesday in Transcarpathia, the missile attack occurred after the second warning in the evening, the Transcarpathian correspondent of public television M1 reported.
A fire broke out at the scene. Viktor Mikita, Head of the Transcarpathian Regional Military Administration, wrote in his Facebook post that no one should take videos or photos on the spot, as this could help the enemy.
Our Fire and Rescue Service is working professionally to extinguish the fire and debris removal is underway. There were no casualties,”
said the military leader, who asked all Transcarpathians to go to shelters as soon as they hear the air raid alarm.
According to the Transcarpathian military administration, 57 houses were left without gas supply due to a damaged gas distribution pipeline.
A few minutes before 10 pm, the Ungvár (Uzhhorod) council posted on its Facebook page that windows had been smashed within 500 meters of the blast and that the fragments had damaged nearby cars.
According to Anton Herashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, “the Russian invaders were trying to stop the transfer of heavy weapons – artillery, tanks, armored vehicles, and ammunition – from the western regions of Ukraine.”
The governor of Transcarpathia had said on April 20 that although there are no military targets in Transcarpathia, he does not rule out the possibility that the Russians will start firing missiles into the area sooner or later.
The Hungarian foreign ministry is in constant contact with the Hungarian representation in Ungvár, State Secretary Tamás Menczer told Kossuth Radio.
The attack started at 6 pm on Tuesday and lasted two hours, he said. No casualties were reported.
“It is important to note that the attack justifies our decision not to transport weapons for the war,” as the deliveries could easily become a target of Russian attacks, he said.
Featured image illustration: A Russian 122 mm BM-21 Grad rocket launcher is fired during the Russian-Belarusian joint strategic exercise Zapad-2021 (West-2021) at the Mulino training area in the Nizhny Novgorod region on September 13, 2021. Photo by Russian Defence Ministry Press Service/EPA/MTI
