The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto, said that Budapest will unblock the meetings of the Ukraine-NATO Committee at the ministerial level, if Kyiv fulfills the demand regarding the rights of Hungarian minorities.
He said this in an interview with Index.
"The transfer of weapons and the disenfranchisement of the Hungarian national community have nothing to do with each other. We do not supply weapons, because we believe that this will definitely lead only to the continuation and escalation of the war. If the Ukrainians restored the original rights of the Hungarian minorities, we would not block, but contributed to the convening of the Ukraine-NATO ministerial committee. We clearly connect this issue with the affairs of the Hungarian minority," Szijjarto said.
According to him, Budapest wants Hungarians to return the rights they had in Ukraine in 2014.
"To be able to study the Hungarian language all the way to the university, to be able to finish it in one's native language, so that there is no need to spoil Hungarian lectures in Transcarpathian cultural centers with Ukrainian dubbing. The problem is really urgent now, because from September of this year, schools of national minorities will practically cease to exist. Only state schools with teaching in the languages of national minorities will remain," the minister said.
It will be recalled that the Hungarian side has previously used the topic of the alleged oppression of the rights of Hungarians. In particular, Szijjarto said in an interview last year: if Ukraine does not change its policy towards the Hungarian minority, it will greatly limit the Hungarian government's ability to provide any support to Kyiv in the conflict with the Russian Federation.