Fractious neighbours Ukraine and Hungary held talks to improve their strained ties as Kyiv stepped up a crackdown on corruption in its defence sector after officials were implicated in an alleged €37-million fraud involving non-delivery of weapons.
Hungary’s position as probably the most Kremlin-friendly country in the European Union and Nato has badly damaged its relations with Kyiv during the Kremlin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions of Ukrainians since February 2022.
The nationalist-populist government of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban is a critic of international sanctions on Russia, opposes western military aid to Kyiv and is blocking an EU package of €50 billion in funding for Ukraine.
However, Budapest now seems more eager to engage with Kyiv amid threats to EU financing for Hungary and growing anger with Mr Orban in major western capitals.
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Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he held “a really productive meeting” on Monday with Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto in the city of Uzhhorod in the Zakarpattia region near Ukraine’s border with Hungary.
“Today both sides made it absolutely clear that they want a meeting to take place between the Hungarian prime minister and the president of Ukraine,” Mr Yermak said.
“I believe that today we have taken a very powerful step towards this meeting. There is no doubt that we are all interested in this meeting’s success and the possibility of it opening a new chapter in our relations.”
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said much of the discussion was on Budapest’s professed concern for the rights of some 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in Zakarpattia.
Mr Kuleba said Mr Szijjarto had delivered a list of questions about language and other minority rights, and that in 10 days a Ukrainian commission would report to the governments of both states on how those concerns had been or would be addressed.
Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs quoted Mr Szijjarto as saying that Budapest “has never asked for any rights for the Hungarians [in Zakarpattia] that did not exist before 2015. I will now make requests here that, if met, would return us to the rights in 2015.”
Laszlo Torockai, leader of the far-right Our Homeland party that holds six of the 199 seats in Hungary’s parliament, said on Saturday: “If this war ends up with Ukraine losing its statehood…let me signal that we lay claim” to Zakarpattia.
Ukraine said it was continuing a crackdown on graft after revealing at the weekend that current and former defence ministry officials and a manager at an arms firm were suspected of failing to deliver shells purchased under a €37 million contract.
Separately, defence minister Rustem Umerov said snap inspections of military warehouses had found that about €1.2 million in food delivery contracts had not been met, and a new director was named at the ministry’s defence procurement agency.
Maryna Bezrukova’s appointment was part of “building a new procurement architecture that will prevent corruption and meet Nato standards,” said Ukrainian deputy defence minister Dmytro Klimenkov.
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