Hungary’s Foreign Minister, Peter Szijjarto, insisted on Monday – during his first visit to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion – that the authorities in Kiev must grant more rights to the Hungarian minority in this country in order to improve relations with Budapest, according to EFE.
In turn, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, announced that the two parties have agreed to establish a bilateral commission to resolve, within ten days, the disagreements between the two sides regarding the issue of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, according to Agerpres.
In a more optimistic tone, Kuleba described the atmosphere of the meeting as “open, sincere” and “constructive” and emphasized that both delegations demonstrated their willingness to “resolve this problem in good faith.”
The Hungarian government vetoed a multi-year aid package of 50 billion euros proposed by Brussels for Ukraine in December, thus blocking its approval within the EU. The approval of these funds will be discussed again at the European Council, which meets on February 1st.
“We demand that the rights that the Hungarian national community in (the Ukrainian region of) Transcarpathia already had in 2015 be restored,” Szijjarto declared, quoted by the Hungarian news portal, telex.hu, regarding the reason cited by Budapest for its opposition to the continuation of aid to Ukraine.
After the removal from power – in the wave of the Maidan revolution in 2014 – of the last pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, Kiev adopted a series of laws aimed at strengthening Ukrainian as the only official language and language of public communication, in a country where Russian is used in daily communication by a large part of its citizens.
These laws also have an impact on the status of other minority languages in Ukraine, such as Hungarian and Romanian, according to EFE.
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