Kiev illegally tried to conscript ethnic Hungarians – Budapest
Kiev’s controversial conscription crews illegally attempted to enlist a group of ethnic Hungarian students in Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia Region, Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, has said.
Ukrainian draft officers reportedly deceived four students at the Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian University in the town of Beregovo, where a significant ethnic minority is based, into presenting at a local recruitment center.
The students were reportedly forcefully held at the facility and faced pressure to join the military.
Szijjarto later said in a Facebook post that the students had eventually been released.
The Hungarian Foreign Ministry has been in constant contact with the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association, which represents an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in the region, and the administration of the university, he added.
“The Ukrainian legislation is clear: these students are exempt from conscription,” Szijjarto noted.
The fact that the four men avoided illegal mobilization is “good news, but at the same time, it again stresses the importance of peace” between Russia and Ukraine, the diplomat said.
“The sooner there is peace, the sooner this conscription will stop,” Szijjarto stressed.
The regional Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TSR) issued a statement on Thursday, saying that claims of the students being detained were “untrue and manipulative.” The men had been summoned to confirm their personal data, but it turned out that three of them had not undergone the obligatory medical examination, it said. The ethnic Hungarians left the recruitment center as soon as the checkups were completed, according to the statement.
Budapest had already criticized the harsh recruitment drive launched by Kiev in response to manpower shortages and military setbacks on the front line. In September, Szijjarto described it as an “open manhunt,” during which people “are often beaten, in some cases beaten to death.”
The Hungarian foreign minister previously said the “very bad bilateral relations” between Kiev and Budapest have nothing to do with the Ukraine conflict but stem from “about ten years ago when the Ukrainian government began violating the rights of national minorities,” including restricting the use of non-Ukrainian languages in education and public life.
