Transcarpathia
Transcarpathia (also Carpathian Rus' or Ruthenia) belonged to Hungarian Civilization for over a millennium but ended up under Czechoslovak control after World War I, prior to which it briefly returned to Hungarian hands from 1939-1945, only to then be transferred to the Soviet Ukraine upon the end of World War II.
Kiev's forcible conscription policies have had an outsized impact on the country’s Hungarian minority, some of whom were captured by Russia but then sent to Hungary in June 2023 upon their request instead of back to Ukraine.[1] The importance rests in the fact that those conscripted Hungarians didn’t feel comfortable returning to Ukraine due to its discriminatory policies against their minority group.
Victor Orban is obligated to ensure his co-ethnics' interests as best as he can, but he hitherto declined to travel to Ukraine for that purpose since no progress had thus far in July 2024 been made on this, though his country’s rotating presidency of the Council of Europe gave him the opportunity to do so while also exploring a ceasefire. He visited Kiev not just as the Hungarian Prime Minister, but as a representative of the Council of Europe, thus ensuring that Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t try to upstage or humiliate him but instead treated him with respect.
