Commenting in regard to President Katalin Novák’s recent visit to Transcarpathia and Kyiv, Gergely Gulyás, Head of the Prime Minister’s office, said it was welcome that the sides discussed the “disenfranchisement of Transcarpathian Hungarians caused by the Ukrainian state” and how this must be rectified.
Gulyás added that hopefully, Ukraine would take substantive measures to restore the rights that Transcarpathian Hungarians had been stripped of. Asked whether the government agreed with Novák’s view that the war in Ukraine should end with the liberation of the Crimean peninsula, Gulyás said the government had consistently condemned both the annexation of Crimea and Russian aggression as violations of international law. However, respect for international law was relative, he added, arguing that powerful actors relativised it. “We’d like to see an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations,” he said. On the subject of large amounts of weapons getting into the hands of mercenaries, he said “this always carries a risk”, but it was unlikely that the region or Russia would be destabilised as a result.
Commenting on the situation in Niger and the direct impact of migration on Hungary and Europe, he said both had an interest in the region’s stability. A Hungarian citizen was evacuated from Niger on Aug. 2 thanks to the coordination of the Tripoli and Rome embassies, he noted. Meanwhile, Gulyás said that each day 420 migrants tried to come to Hungary on average between Jan. 1 and Aug. 22. Regarding proceedings related to the beating in Budapest of a man by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s security team, Gulyás said everyone must abide by the law, and he condemned violence as “unacceptable”. He added that no serious injuries had been sustained, however, and the Hungarian police’s actions to remove the aggressors from the Hungarian man had been “exemplary”. Gulyás noted that the Prime Minister will go on holiday at the end of August and take part in a citizens’ picnic “on the first or second weekend of September”.