Hungary's "punishment" for Ukraine: how Magyar aims to humiliate Kyiv and block its EU future

19.09.2026, 03:09 eurointegration.com.ua

On 18 September, Ukraine hosted the inaugural Carpathian Initiative summit, which brought together leaders or senior officials from all the countries linked by the Carpathian mountain range: Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Czechia and Austria. Only one country was missing – Hungary. To meet with presidents and prime ministers, Hungary sent... a deputy ambassador.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar did not simply ignore the event.

It appears that while preparations were still underway, Budapest attempted to humiliate Kyiv and provoke a reaction, while Ukrainian officials tried to defuse the conflict.

Unfortunately, these events reflect Hungary's new policy.

A demonstrative contempt for Ukraine is at its centre.

The main tool of this policy remains the artificial crisis in relations that was created under former prime minister Viktor Orbán. While Magyar's government publicly declares its intention to restore good-neighbourly relations with Ukraine, it is actually cementing the problems that have built up over time.

Magyar's government policy is also punishing the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia, firstly by blocking their path towards EU membership, and secondly by creating obstacles to the passing of laws the minority needs.

The lack of political dialogue with Hungary means Kyiv has no realistic scenarios for resolving this crisis. The only hope is that European and US partners will be able to convince Magyar to change his policy.

Two weeks ago, experts, politicians and diplomats working on Ukrainian-Hungarian relations had an excellent reason to be optimistic.

The Ukrainian parliament became the first parliament in the world to officially condemn the repression of Hungarians during the Soviet era. This crime, known in Hungary as "málenkij robot" (from the Russian for "little work"), was committed after the end of World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Hungarians, most of them civilians, were deported to the Soviet Union for forced labour. Tens of thousands never returned home, dying in camps, on the way, or in other circumstances.

Residents of Zakarpattia were also affected by these actions, so condemning the Soviet repression was an entirely logical step for the Ukrainian parliament.

The timing of the decision regarding "málenkij robot" was no accident. Ruslan Stefanchuk, speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, was preparing to visit Budapest and wanted to create a diplomatic bargaining chip that could help thaw relations with Ukraine's neighbour.

But no one could have imagined what Hungary's response would be.

The speaker of the Hungarian parliament, Ágnes Forsthoffer, refused to meet with her Ukrainian counterpart while he was in the country. And so did every other Hungarian official. A few days later, Stefanchuk happened to be in Budapest again on his way home from a G7 meeting, and once again, no one was available to meet him.

Despite these actions by his counterparts, the Ukrainian speaker decided not to escalate the conflict. In a comment to European Pravda, his office emphasised that they were continuing to work on arranging a meeting. However, they also pointed out that Forsthoffer herself had invited her Ukrainian counterpart, only to later refuse to meet with him.

Stefanchuk’s spokesperson Vadym Kolodiichuk told European Pravda: "The Ukrainian and Hungarian teams are actively working on arranging the first meeting between the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada and the Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary, Ágnes Forsthoffer. We are grateful to the Hungarian side for their official invitation to visit Budapest. At the same time, we are ready to welcome Ágnes Forsthoffer in Kyiv or any other Ukrainian city, subject to mutual agreement."

Members of parliament who spoke with European Pravda off the record tended to be harsher in their assessments, describing the situation as a "slap in the face" from Budapest.

But what happened next is even more striking.

A popular explanation in Budapest is that the two leaders, Zelenskyy and Magyar, should meet first.

European Pravda sources had also expressed hopes that the Hungarian prime minister would attend the Carpathian Initiative summit. The thinking was that this was why Forsthoffer, who has no authority over foreign policy, had been unwilling to meet.

These explanations are contrary to the rules of diplomacy. On the contrary, if a leaders’ meeting is to be successful, it needs to be prepared for in advance. The fundamental agreements are worked out first, and the leaders then meet to settle politically sensitive details. Given that decisions by the Verkhovna Rada will be required to resolve the crisis in relations with Hungary, a meeting between the parliamentary speakers would have been appropriate.

That said, Magyar does often act contrary to established rules and conventional logic.

But the main problem is that he isn’t just avoiding meetings with Ukraine.

The Carpathian Initiative summit provided a vivid example.

European Pravda is aware that negotiations with Budapest over Magyar’s attendance at the summit had been going on for quite some time. Several sources claim that only two days before the summit began, the Hungarian prime minister’s office had still not said whether he would be travelling to Ukraine. Then an upcoming trip to the Hungarian city of Pécs was announced on Magyar’s Facebook page that would have been impossible to fit in if he had been visiting Ukraine as scheduled.

All previous attempts to arrange a meeting also failed.

Since the beginning of the summer, Magyar has rejected numerous proposals from Kyiv for a meeting – in Budapest, Brussels, Lviv and elsewhere. Twice, Zelenskyy has caught up with Magyar in person at multilateral international events – the EU and NATO summits. Magyar promised to agree to a full-fledged meeting, but then nothing came of it.

This rather undermines Budapest’s official explanation that the speaker, Ágnes Forsthoffer, was reluctant to meet because she wanted to give priority to Magyar.

It looks more like Budapest is avoiding any political dialogue with Ukraine.

It also looks as if they are trying to humiliate the Ukrainian government.

Forsthoffer is generally not very active in foreign policy, and up until this week she had not held a single meeting with speakers of other countries’ parliaments in Budapest. So technically it could have been argued that that was the reason for her reluctance to meet with Stefanchuk, despite Ukraine’s gesture ahead of his visit.

But two days before the Carpathian summit, a signal came from Budapest: no, this had been a targeted refusal specifically aimed at Ukraine. To prove the point, the speaker of Moldova’s parliament, Igor Grosu, was invited to Budapest to meet with Forsthoffer.

Moldova is not a priority partner for Hungary. Inviting Grosu was apparently intended as a signal or even a slap in the face for Ukraine.

Hungary is the only EU member state that is advocating for Moldova and Ukraine to be decoupled as they progress towards EU membership. It has proposed several times that the EU open the next negotiating clusters for Moldova while freezing the process for Ukraine.

European Pravda sources say that Kyiv got the message.

The biggest problem is that Hungary is blocking EU membership for Ukraine without clearly stating what Kyiv needs to do for the veto to be lifted.

The blockade is just there, and no one knows how to bring it to an end.

That is precisely why meetings between senior officials – whether parliamentary speakers or heads of government – are necessary: so that the two sides can understand each other’s positions and find a way out of the crisis. Hungary is doing everything it can to prevent such a dialogue from taking place.

Moreover, even in the EU negotiations, Hungary avoids being specific about what it demands of Ukraine. All we hear is that Ukraine has to "show progress" in implementing agreements on minority rights. Yet we are currently on track for reviewing legislative changes according to a schedule that was agreed on with the Hungarians. For example, in September we submitted a draft on implementing the agreements in the field of education to the European Commission and the Hungarian side.

In other words, Ukraine is fulfilling its commitments, whereas Hungary, which promised back in June to unblock all the clusters, is breaking that promise.

The veto remains in place, just as it was under Orbán, with no explanations and no dialogue whatsoever.

That’s the most shocking part.

Last spring Hungary got rid of Viktor Orbán, who had been moving further into Russia’s orbit (while his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, was openly carrying out the Kremlin’s wishes and leaking information from closed EU meetings to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov).

Magyar, who replaced him, emphasises his opposition to Russia...

But when it comes to Ukraine, his actions often differ little from those of his predecessor.

What is Péter Magyar’s true objective? That question remains unanswered. The explanations offered by Hungarian politicians and diplomats do not seem convincing.

In Budapest they claim that Magyar is constrained by public opinion, which is largely negative towards Ukraine. It’s true that after years of Orbán’s propaganda machine, anti-Ukraine prejudices have become entrenched among many Hungarians, and it will take years to overcome them.

But that doesn’t explain the logic behind these actions. Is Magyar really planning to wait five, seven or even 10 years before the next negotiating clusters are opened? Or is this just a convenient excuse?

What’s more, Hungary has already enabled two clusters to be opened for Ukraine (Cluster 1 in June and Cluster 6 in July) without any political or reputational losses ensuing for the government – in fact Magyar’s approval ratings went up. Nor has this been a particularly noticeable topic in Hungary’s domestic political debates or a source of criticism within the country.

Ukraine has its own version of