Ian Bateson is a journalist based in Ukraine and visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM). The research for this piece was enabled by “Reporters in the Field,” a Robert Bosch Foundation program hosted together with the media NGO n-ost.
CHOMA, Ukraine — As an indicator of diplomatic crisis, the gathering in the village of Choma in western Ukraine is pretty tame. But look closer and the signs of tension are clear.
A small crowd has gathered for a festival of Hungarian culture at a local cemetery in an area where many believe the first Hungarian horsemen crossed the Carpathian Mountains into Central Europe in the ninth century.
It’s a part of Ukraine that once belonged to Hungary, and — judging from the crowd’s behavior — there are many among them who would like it to be part of Hungary once again. The gathering stays silent as the Ukrainian anthem plays, but joins in when the Hungarian anthem kicks off. Many of those in attendance have their watches set to Budapest, rather than Kyiv, time.
“The cemetery is important because Ukrainians say that the Hungarians aren’t native, but it shows we have lived here since at least the ninth century,” says Mester Andras, the mayor of a neighboring village.
“Hungarians in Ukraine love Orbán. He provided a lot of support” — former Ukrainian MP László Brenzovics
At the end of the day, the crowd goes home unhindered — and indeed barely noticed — by the local authorities. But the ceremony is part of a much larger tug-of-war between Budapest and Kyiv that has escalated since 2017, as a sort of aftershock from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The disagreement kicked into high gear that year when Kyiv limited the use of the Russian language in education in the country — and unintentionally also curtailed the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in the country.
That move remains a sore spot for Hungarian nationalists like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has made the most of the crisis, retaliating for Kyiv’s language laws by blocking Ukraine’s progress in NATO and the EU.
His government has lavished aid on the ethnic Hungarian community in the area and granted them passports, despite Kyiv’s ban on dual citizenship. In a 2018 video that went viral, the Hungarian consul gave a champagne toast to a group of new Hungarian passport holders, saying: “Don’t tell the Ukrainian authorities.” Many of them cross the border to vote in regional elections in Hungary.
“Hungarians in Ukraine love Orbán,” says László Brenzovics, who was the only ethnic-Hungarian in Ukraine’s parliament until he lost his seat in July, on the sidelines of the festival. “He provided a lot of support.”
* * *
When the Ukrainian parliament passed a law in 2017 limiting the use of languages other than Ukrainian in schools, the country’s ethnic Hungarian population was an afterthought at best.
Debate over the legislation — which mandated that Ukrainian be the dominant language in all schools — had focused on limiting the use of Russian. The language has been seen as a security threat after Moscow used the presence of Russian speakers in Crimea and eastern Ukraine as excuses for its interventions into the country.
It was unclear how the new law would affect the use of other languages, such as Hungarian. Some members of parliament said they believed there was a full exemption for official languages of the European Union. There wasn’t. “Shooting at Russia, they hit Hungary,” said Beatrix Tölgyesi, a lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University.
“The Russians will never stop non-military activities in Ukraine. They will keep using the issue of national minorities.” — former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin
Things quickly took a turn for the worse. After Hungary began blocking high-level meetings between Ukraine and NATO, the stand-off escalated in February 2018, when the office of Ukraine’s main ethnic-Hungarian party was struck by two separate arson attacks.
The question of who ordered the attacks remains disputed, with officials in Kyiv accusing Moscow of staging a provocation. Three right-wing Poles with ties to Russia are on trial in Poland for the first attack, and two Ukrainian nationals, who say they were paid to carry out the attack, are facing court proceedings in Ukraine for the second.
“The Russians will never stop non-military activities in Ukraine. They will keep using the issue of national minorities,” said former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who stepped down in August.
Budapest disagrees. “We see problems and attacks and aggression as coming from Ukraine not Russia,” said Attila Demkó, the former head of Hungarian defense policy.
* * *
Since Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s election to the Ukrainian presidency in May, both Kyiv and Budapest have said they are committed to improving relations. But so far tensions show no sign of decreasing.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy | Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images
In October, Hungary again flexed its muscles at NATO, vetoing a declaration on Ukraine because it did not mention Kyiv’s obligation to protect ethnic Hungarians. A subsequent NATO statement called on Ukraine to “respect” the rights of its minorities and alter its education law. “Hungary won’t surrender the Transcarpathian Hungarian community to geopolitics,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said.
Orbán has also used the issue to draw closer to key allies, like the U.S. and Russia, and boost his nationalist message. In a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in May, the Hungarian leader voiced deeply critical views of Ukraine, focusing in particular on the treatment of its Hungarian minority. Days after speaking with Orbán, Trump said Ukrainians were “all corrupt” and “terrible people.”
Budapest is also planning to spend nearly $17 million as part of its commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon next year. Under the agreement, which ended the country’s participation in World War I, Hungary lost roughly two-thirds of its people and territory, including the slice of impoverished Western Ukraine where Choma is located.
The government has said it plans to build a granite passageway that will lead to the Hungarian parliament and bear the names of 13,000 cities and towns in Ukraine, Romania and Serbia that were once a part of Hungary.
What happens next is far from clear. The dispute over the language law has delayed its implementation until 2023. The direction Ukraine’s foreign policy will take under Zelenskiy is still up in the air.
“The most important thing for us are the kids and not the politics. We are hostages in this situation.” — Maria Kesler, a teacher at a Ukrainian-Hungarian school in the western Ukrainian town of Yasinia
But Hungary’s success in torpedoing NATO initiatives on Ukraine spells trouble for Kyiv’s prospects of eventual EU or NATO membership, experts say. The disagreement has also shown Russian how divided NATO is when it comes to Ukraine.
Among the ethnic Hungarian community in the country, the dispute has added to a general sense of political and economic insecurity. Thousands have left in search of work in the West already. Those who stay say they feel caught in an uncomfortable limbo.
“The most important thing for us are the kids and not the politics,” said Maria Kesler, a teacher at a Ukrainian-Hungarian school in the western Ukrainian town of Yasinia. Her school began teaching bilingually several years ago to cater to the village’s mixed population. She’s worried the law will restrict her ability to do so, which could further exacerbate local tensions.
“We are hostages in this situation.”