Not satisfied with war in East, Ukraine regime goes after Hungarian minority in West (Video)

The Ukraine regime has decided that one conflict in the east of the country in not enough, decided to now stir up tensions in the west of the country by expelling a Hungarian consul accused of carrying out “activities incompatible” with the consulate’s status.

Kiev’s foreign ministry declared the diplomat leading the consulate in the small town of Berehove, “persona non grata”, giving the diplomat 72 hours to leave the country after being accused of illegally issuing passports to ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine. In hidden camera footage posted to YouTube in September, Hungarian consular staff in Berehove are shown distributing Hungarian citizenship documents.

Kiev’s foreign ministry said in a statement…

“He was given a note stating that, in accordance with Article 23 of the Wien Convention on Consular Relations of 1963, in connection with activities incompatible with the status of a consular officer, the Consul of the Consulate of Hungary in the city of Berehove should leave the territory of Ukraine during the next 72 hours.

We hope that the Hungarian side will refrain from any unfriendly steps towards Ukraine in the future, and that its officials will not violate Ukrainian legislation.

We consider Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian origin as a unifying factor in relations between the two states and call on our Hungarian partners to keep a similar behaviour.”

Berehove, a city near the Hungarian border, is located within the Zakarpattya region, where close to 200,000 ethnic Hungarians live. In response to the expulsion, Hungary has promised to block Kiev’s aspirations to join the European Union and NATO. Prior to World War II this region was not considered part of then-Soviet Ukraine.

The Express UK reports, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused Kiev of “constantly” violating the rights of the Hungarians living in the country.

Speaking during a visit to Moscow, Mr Szijjarto added: “A much bigger problem is that the law on education Ukraine had passed, which violates the rights of the Hungarian ethnic minority, has not been amended to date.

“Despite the fact that we are interested in good-neighbourly relations with Kiev, Ukraine’s president and government reduced to zero good contacts between our country and Ukraine.”

Mr Szijjarto referred to Ukraine’s move agreed last year to force teachers to use only Ukrainian in secondary schools.

The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the increasing row between Ukraine and Hungary, which pits the US backed ‘Maidan coup’ government of Petro Poroshenko against the ‘Brussels defiant’ government of Hungarian leader Viktor Orban.

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Not Satisfied With War In East, Ukraine Regime Goes After Hungarian Minority In West by The Duran

The Duran – News in Review – Episode 129. The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the increasing row between Ukraine and Hungary, which pits the US backed ‘Maidan coup’ government of Petro Poroshenko against the ‘Brussels defiant’ government of Hungarian leader Viktor Orban.

Via WSW…

Discrimination against the Hungarian language has been presented by the government of Viktor Orban as the main reason for its increasingly negative attitude towards Kiev. In September of 2017, the Ukrainian government of Petro Poroshenko introduced a new, undemocratic language law that limited the ability of ethnic minorities to be instructed in their native language. It made Ukrainian the required language of instruction for all students in secondary school.

While the bill was clearly intended to target the use of Russian language in schools and “Ukrainianize” the country’s Russian population, it also angered other ethnic minorities. In response to the changes in the language bill, EU members Hungary, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria all filed complaints with the Council of Europe and the OSCE. Hungary said that it will veto any vote in support of Ukrainian membership in the EU and NATO, unless the language bill is changed.

The enforced use of Ukrainian has been utilized by the Poroshenko regime and the country’s nationalist thugs to attack ethnic minorities and whip up ethnic hatred of all things “anti-Ukrainian.” This is part of the now over four-year-long war against the Russian-majority Donbass region of the country, which attempted to break away from Kiev in the wake of the anti-Russian coup that brought Poroshenko to power.

In September, the western city of Lviv banned all Russian-language books, movies and other cultural artefacts, despite the fact that a substantial minority of the population uses the Russian language in daily life.

Such actions have further emboldened right-wing thugs to attack those speaking languages other than Ukrainian in the public sphere. In September, a McDonald’s worker in Kiev was accosted by a right-wing “activist” for speaking Russian while serving customers.

Although language has been the issue most prominently cited by the Western media as the source of tensions between Hungary and Ukraine, there are more fundamental material and strategic issues at play.

Despite being both an EU and NATO member, the anti-immigrant, far-right government of Orban has cultivated closer ties with Russia, much to the annoyance of the United States and other EU members. Hungary has been one of the only EU members to voice opposition to EU sanctions against Russia. It has continued to vote for their enforcement in the European Council, so as not to endanger its own status with the EU.

Hungary is also one of the few EU countries that has seen its trade increase with Russia, after initially falling as a result of the sanctions. The country expects its trade with Russia to nearly double in the coming year.

Orban and Russian President Vladimir Putin held face-to-face talks in early September over gas and energy supplies. Russia is set to build a “TurkStream” oil pipeline that, like the Nordstream pipeline in the Baltic Sea, will allow Russian oil to bypass Ukraine en route to Western Europe.

At the summit, Orban admitted that it was “no secret that when the gas pipeline from the south comes towards Hungary, we would like it to continue through Hungary. That would be a great opportunity for Hungary.”

Russia and Hungary also agreed to move forward with the building of two Russian-made nuclear reactors at the Paks Nuclear Power Plant in central Hungary.

The inflaming of Hungarian-Ukrainian relations takes place as the Azov Sea has becomes a new flashpoint between the Russian and Ukrainian militaries. Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out aggressive actions against Ukrainian ships in the region and using the waters to supply Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass region.

In addition to already announced plans to build a naval base on the Azov Sea, Ukraine’s Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Oleksandr Turchynov declared last week that the country intends “to conduct serious drills in the waters of the Azov Sea.” For its part, Washington has supplied the Ukrainian navy with patrol boats.

Last month Ukraine conducted a series of provocative military exercises throughout the country with the support and involvement of the United States, which has military “advisers” all over the territory. Ukraine’s army sent troops towards the Hungarian border during the exercises, in an attempt to intimidate Budapest. Kiev denied that the exercises targeted Hungary, absurdly claiming that the show of force was meant to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine from the west.

While Trump is constantly lambasted by the Democratic Party for being insufficiently aggressive towards Russia, he has in fact gone further than former President Barack Obama in support for Kiev, including by sending the country Javelin anti-tank missiles.

In September, the US House of Representatives approved the 2019 draft military budget, which increases war funding for Ukraine to $250 million.