The Prisoners Of War Complicating Ukraine-Hungary Relations

Ukrainian officials blindsided by Russia's surprise handover to Hungary of 11 Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW) two weeks ago have voiced ongoing frustration at Budapest's "covert" tactics in a case they say contravened international law and furthered Kremlin war aims.

The European Union has added to the chorus of confusion and urged the Hungarian side to explain to Ukrainian officials what happened, how it happened, and who orchestrated the June 8 transfer.

All of the POWs are said to be ethnic Hungarians, a minority of around 100,000 people in western Ukraine that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban frequently invoked to criticize Ukrainian policies well before his dogged criticism of anti-Russian sanctions further strained relations with Kyiv. They were captured by Russia along with other Ukrainian defense forces in the 15-month-old invasion.

A representative of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate suggested to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on June 20 that Hungary -- an EU and NATO member which has maintained close relations with Russia despite sanctions -- had politicized what has become "a very strange case, to say the least."

"The fact that we are discussing this situation at all is very unfortunate," said Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR). "Because the event, which could be absolutely positive, turns into some kind of dramatic detective story with a very tangible political undertone."

Andriy Yusov (file photo)

At that point, Yusov said, Kyiv had no confirmation of the handover from the Russian side and a "preliminary list" of "probably 11 defenders" had been obtained unofficially, including through "operational channels."

Later that day, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and a coordination center for POWs in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war announced that three of the men had been returned to Ukraine with the help of the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest.

Ukrainian officials had accused Hungary of denying access to the transferred men, something Budapest denies. And the fate of the eight remaining individuals was still unclear on June 22.

By then, the Ukrainian parliament's commissioner for human rights, ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, had confirmed the return of three men and accused the Hungarian side of acting "covertly." He said Hungary's actions in accepting Ukrainian POWs "unequivocally" constituted "a violation of international humanitarian law."

The European Commission expressed its own frustration on behalf of nonmember Ukraine the same day. "It is very important that the relevant Hungarian authorities involved in this case, and active in this case, explain to their Ukrainian counterparts what happened, how it happened, what was the role of Hungary, who was involved, who was not involved, how this was managed," commission spokesman Peter Stano told journalists.

Russian news agency TASS reported on June 8 that the Russian Orthodox Church had "facilitated the handover of Ukrainian POWs to Hungary…within the framework of inter-church cooperation at the request of the Hungarian side."

Few Clear Answers

With few clear answers and speculation about their whereabouts still swirling a week later, multiple sources, including in the Hungarian government and diplomatic corps, suggested that there was anger among senior officials because neither Orban's office nor the Foreign Ministry had been aware of the POW initiative.

Later, the Ukrainian HUR's Yusov said the Hungarian side appeared to have initiated discussions with the Russians about the exchange. That appears to contradict claims by multiple sources to RFE/RL's Hungarian Service that Metropolitan Hilarion Alfejev, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Hungary and a confidant of Russian Patriarch Kirill, first informed Orban's secretary for church affairs, Miklos Soltesz, about a possible handover. By June 15, Deputy Prime Minister and Hungarian Christian Democratic Party leader Zsolt Semjen was being credited with a major -- but ostensibly rogue -- role in securing the handover.

Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen (file photo)

Orban's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, suggested that the 11 men had been handed over to a Hungarian charity service in Russia and therefore were not considered prisoners of war by the time they were moved to Hungary. Some have Hungarian citizenship and others were granted refugee status, Gulyas added.

An Orban spokesman's repeated references to the freed individuals as "Transcarpathian prisoners of war" has further fueled speculation over the Hungarian side's motives in keeping Kyiv out of the loop.

"I see this as playing along with Russian propaganda, that allegedly Ukraine does not want to take its prisoners of war, which is absolutely false," Ukrainian ombudsman Lubinets said. "The Hungarian authorities therefore allow Russia to show that if there is an initiative, the Russians are ready to hand over prisoners of war."

Ukraine has a Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War that has negotiated dozens of prisoner swaps and releases since the conflict with Russia and its proxy separatists in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 then escalated with the all-out invasion early last year.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto and other Hungarian officials have insisted that their priority since February 2022 is peace and saving lives, although their calls for an immediate cease-fire have been criticized as risking locking in Russian territorial gains in Ukraine.

'Transcarpathian Hungarians'

The populist Orban has spent much of the past decade offering citizenship and otherwise rallying ethnic Hungarians in neighboring states behind real or manufactured grievances, including around 100,000 in western Ukraine that Budapest refers to as "Transcarpathian Hungarians."

Orban's Kremlin-friendly positions in the current war have reportedly complicated the situation for many of those communities, whose numbers were already declining before the current war.

With Russia occupying Crimea and backing separatists waging war in eastern Ukraine, the Orban government particularly assailed the passage in Ukraine in 2016 of laws to ensure the universal teaching of Ukrainian in schools at the expense of minority languages including Hungarian and Russian.

More recently, Orban's government has waged a public campaign against EU and other Western sanctions against Russia since the war began 15 months ago, and it has been outspoken in its opposition to possible NATO membership for Ukraine. Orban, Szijjarto, and other senior officials have visited Russia multiple times since the war began, and Budapest has extended and deepened energy cooperation with new gas and oil deals with its Russian counterparts.

Budapest also blocked an EU plan to impose sanctions on Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, a longtime ally of President Vladimir Putin, who has used his pulpit to rally Russian support for the war. The Russian church's role in the POW handover this month would almost certainly have required Kirill's approval.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (left) and his Hungarian counterpart, Katalin Novak, at a press briefing in Kyiv in November 2022.

Even as senior Hungarians traveled to Russia for meetings with Putin and other officials shunned by the West since the invasion, Orban reportedly laid out "prerequisites" for a potential trip to Kyiv.

The most senior visit by a Hungarian official to Ukraine came when President Katalin Novak met with her counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv in November 2022, in what was widely seen as an effort to soften Brussels' stance on withholding billions in EU funding from Hungary. Novak, an Orban protege, described the trip as a mission to support Transcarpathian Hungarians there, possibly to deflect dismay among Fidesz party supporters that she was lending support to Ukraine.

More recently, Zelenskiy's appointment of Fedir Sandor, an ethnic Hungarian professor hailed as a hero for continuing lectures to students from the front lines, as Kyiv's new ambassador to Hungary has reportedly been held up for months by Novak.