Playing with Fire
Last week, leaders of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland competed at asecurity conference in Bratislava in the political categories of cynicism and hypocrisy. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban proved himself the master. He defended his call, several days old, for the 200,000-strong Hungarian minority in Ukraine to be granted autonomy. At a time when some of that country’s eastern regions are attempting to secede, such comments were considered, to say the least, inappropriate and playing to Russian efforts to make Ukraine as chaotic as possible before the presidential elections there on 25 May.
Transcarpathian Ukraine, where the Hungarian minority lives, is ethnically, linguistically and religiously, a diverse region. National boundaries there have changed so often that the region’s residents lived in nine countries during the 20th century. They are, therefore, used to anything. But Orban, as a traditional defender of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, now has apparently gone too far.
During the debate in Bratislava he said Ukraine does not have a vision to survive and that Brussels is leaning hard only on Moscow and not on Kyiv, whose collapse will cost its neighbors a lot of money.
Transcarpathian Ukraine, where the Hungarian minority lives, is ethnically, linguistically and religiously, a diverse region. National boundaries there have changed so often that the region’s residents lived in nine countries during the 20th century. They are, therefore, used to anything. But Orban, as a traditional defender of Hungarian minorities in neighboring countries, now has apparently gone too far.
During the debate in Bratislava he said Ukraine does not have a vision to survive and that Brussels is leaning hard only on Moscow and not on Kyiv, whose collapse will cost its neighbors a lot of money.
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