Hungary’s incoming prime minister Péter Magyar has called on the Ukrainian leadership to take “bold steps” when it comes to increasing the language rights of Ukraine’s Hungarian minority.
Magyar also said that he was “initiating consultations” with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, over the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Hungarian minority lives mostly in the western Zakarpattia region, also known as Transcarpathia, near the Hungarian border. The region is home to more than 100,000 ethnic Hungarians.
Limits on the official use of the Hungarian language in Ukraine and alleged discrimination against the minority became another source of friction in the fraught relationship between the outgoing Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán and Kyiv.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Magyar said that he wants to meet Zelenskyy in early June in Berehove, a Hungarian-majority town in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region.
Magyar wrote that he had met Berehove Mayor Zoltán Babják, who briefed him on “the situation of Hungarians in Transcarpathia and the horrors of the war.”
He said the proposed meeting with Zelenskyy would aim “to improve the situation of Hungarians in Transcarpathia and to support their ability to remain in their homeland.”
