Tristan Azbej, the state secretary in charge of aid to persecuted Christian communities, made a “solidarity visit aimed at assessing the situation” to Transcarpathia at the invitation of Greek Catholic Bishop Nil Lushchak on Wednesday.
According to MTI, Azbej said, “the most urgent and important step is to stop the bloodshed; an immediate ceasefire and peace talks are needed”. The state secretary visited a refugee shelter operated by the Greek Catholic Church at Velykyi Bereznyi (Nagyberezna) near Uzhhorod (Ungvár) and said the Hungarian government had used some 130 billion forints (EUR 334m) since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine to help the war’s victims. Azbej spoke highly of the charity organisations and churches active in Transcarpathia. He said the local Greek Catholic bishopry had received a sum of 120 million forints from the Hungarian government to provide shelter to some 300,000 people that had fled to western Ukraine from the war-hit regions of the country, as well as to “families irrespective of ethnicity that have lost their bread-winning members”. The state secretary also met ethnic Hungarian leaders in Transcarpathia, and said “the greatest problem is to provide services for domestic refugees”.