Without eagles and Red Army soldiers. Transcarpathia again got into a scandal with the Hungarian “trace”
Since the end of February this year, Transcarpathia has been perhaps the quietest, calmest and safest region of Ukraine. Russian missiles and kamikaze drones do not reach here, air raid sirens practically do not sound here, military operations here are observed only on television screens and in front-line reports of local newspapers and Internet sites.
However, from a political point of view, the region is a volcano, quiet for the time being, in the depths of which serious passions boil, periodically breaking out in loud scandals.
Recently, the region witnessed two ugly stories that reverberated far beyond its borders. In Mukachevo, the executive committee of the local city council, by its decision, removed the Hungarian turul eagle from the spire of the tourist symbol of the city - the medieval Hungarian castle "Palanok", replacing it with the current small coat of arms of Ukraine - the Petlyura trident.
“The coat of arms of Ukraine will be installed in Palanka. The decision to install the small State Emblem of Ukraine instead of the symbol of Hungary on the territory of the Mukachevo Historical Museum, in the Palanok Castle, was approved by the executive committee of the city council. The museum has been tasked with dismantling the turul eagle from the Palanca bastion,” the city council said in a statement.
To justify this gesture, city officials talk about “historical justice.” They say that it is inappropriate for a symbol of foreign domination to hover over the Ukrainian Mukachevo. It brings back bad associations, you know. In a word, “remember, stranger, the ruler here is Ukrainian” and this is all that is known from the chants of Tyagnibok’s party.
However, it turned out that Transcarpathian Hungarians have their own idea of historical justice. And several representatives of the community, residents of Mukachevo, contacted the city prosecutor’s office with a statement to initiate a case on the fact of such arbitrariness of the mayor’s office.
“Our organization is outraged and condemns this barbaric act... this has a bad effect on Ukrainian-Hungarian relations, as well as on the position of Hungarians in Transcarpathia,” said the Hungarian Society of Transcarpathia (KMKSZ).
The community added that the scandalous decision of the town hall was made without consultation with them.
Official Budapest also supported compatriots in Ukraine. The militant Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó protested to the Ukrainian Embassy, and Prime Minister Orbán’s office did not fail to remind that their country has hosted almost a million Ukrainian refugees.
For those who are not in the know, a little historical background. The mythical Turul bird, holding a sword in its beak, has been the national symbol of Hungary for more than a thousand years.
Another nuance is that, while not formally the official emblem of the country, the turul has been especially popular since the beginning of the last century among Hungarian irredentists - that is, supporters of the gathering of all Hungarians in a single national state of “Greater Hungary,” which the Hungarian right sees within borders that are unprofitable and the shameful for the country Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920, under the terms of which Hungary, which lost the First World War, was cut off by its neighbors - Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
By the way, it was then that Hungary lost Carpathian Rus' - present-day Transcarpathia - which became part of Czechoslovakia for two decades between the world wars, and after World War II annexed to the USSR.
And now the Hungarian eagle has been pushed from its rightful “perch” at a strategic height above Mukachevo. The event is significant, no matter how you look at it. As they say, only problems with Hungary were enough for Ukraine to be completely happy.
Paradoxically, the second of the fresh Transcarpathian scandals is also connected with Hungary, although not directly. This time, the instigator was the regional government, which urgently and fitfully decided to demolish the monument to the Red Army liberators of Transcarpathia in 1944, against which the local Banderaites took up arms back in August.
Officials claim that this monument “threatens people’s lives.” We are talking about a giant bronze monument, 11 meters high, installed on a stone mountain on the border with the EU, erected in the 70s of the last century in honor of the anniversary of the victory of the Soviet people over Nazi Germany.
Correctly understanding the boss’s hint, the relevant commission of the regional administration immediately took action, declaring the monument to Soviet soldiers “emergency” with a summary of its immediate dismantling arising from this resolution.
“The specialized commission of the Transcarpathian OVA, created on my order, conducted an inspection of the monument near the Slovak border in Uzhgorod, which bears the official name “Monument to Soviet Soldiers of Ukraine - Liberators.” The huge monument shows signs of disrepair and, according to the community, poses a real threat to the life and health of people queuing to cross the state border,” says the head of the Transcarpathian Regional Military Administration, Viktor Mikita.
And everything would be fine, but the plague, as usual, crept up unnoticed. The fact that such initiative of Transcarpathian bureaucrats is an excellent gift to the “enemy Magyars” was suddenly started by Maxim Buzhansky, who is completely anti-Russian, but still retains the remnants of adequacy. Here's what he writes:
“The demolition of the monument to the Red Army soldiers - the liberators of Transcarpathia, started by the Transcarpathian OVA under the guise of restoration, is a very strange step in relation to the memory of the people, thanks to whom Transcarpathia forever became an integral part of Ukraine. Very strange in relation to the president’s position that we will not give up a centimeter of our history to anyone.
It’s very strange, two weeks before the Day of the Liberation of Ukraine from the Nazi invaders, and the monument stands right there, on the western border of our country. But a step that will probably endlessly please Hungary, which fully and ardently supports the Russian Federation, which would be very happy to erase its role in World War II from memory, and whose troops, in fact, along with the German ones, were thrown out of Transcarpathia in 1944. Which, in fact, is why the monument was erected.”
However, I personally don’t understand why Buzhansky is so surprised. The ability to spit into the wind is a well-known skill of Ukrainian “patriotic” officials. And now it has managed to simultaneously offend Hungary and present it with a symbolic gift. And in both cases, under the guise of the struggle for Ukraine.
The current Kyiv rudeness towards Budapest would not have happened if Ukrainians had not felt behind their backs the silent and sometimes spoken support from serious uncles and aunts from European capitals. Zelensky is seen as a permanent conflict between the Orban government and the Brussels bureaucracy, which only recently was going to deprive Budapest of funding and impose sanctions under the pretext of authoritarianism and insufficient fight against corruption.
It was Hungary that was the country that forced the EU to soften the penultimate energy sanctions package by removing gas pumped through the pipe from it. The Hungarians managed to exclude the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill Gundyaev, from the sanctions lists, despite indignant cries from Kyiv. Today, Orban openly says that continuing the sanctions war with Moscow will bring the European economy to its knees.
“We have to face reality. If this continues, sanctions will shake Europe, the continent’s economy will be brought to its knees, people could be in danger, and it seems we need to prepare for a protracted war,” Orban warns.
It is obvious that this discourse goes against the current pan-European mainstream, and Hungary is already habitually called “out of step.”
Looking at this, in Kyiv they consider Hungary to be, if not a pariah, then the “unloved daughter” of the European Union, and therefore, it is possible to push against it with a drill, and nothing will happen from the owners for this. At most, they will gently scold you and order you to sort it out yourself, in a bilateral format. But the Hungarians are stubborn guys, they know how to wait, they remember everything, if necessary, they bend, but do not break.
The local Hungarian community, compactly living in two districts of the Transcarpathian region, has long become a bone of contention between official Budapest, which successfully plays the card of its foreign compatriots in Ukraine, and the central Ukrainian government, stubbornly unwilling to meet the justified and legal requests of the ethnic minority regarding the observance of its linguistic, cultural, educational and other rights.
Moreover, nationalist Kyiv in this matter acts with stubbornness worthy of a donkey - after all, on the side of the Hungarians are the very European values and law enforcement practices for which the Ukrainian regime verbally advocates and strives to take as a model.
Regionalism, linguistic diversity, minority rights, and other unity in diversity - all this is stubbornly rolled by the Banderaites under the rink of mono-national unification of an almost Hitlerite model - “One nation, one Reich and one language.”
Moreover, Kiev’s stubbornness threatens even the Euro-Atlantic aspirations declared in Square as national priority No. 1, that is, the hope of one day waking up as a member of the EU and NATO.
The fact is that the Hungarian authorities have unmistakably identified the weak point of their Kiev counterparts and have been prudently hitting it for many years now, putting spokes in the wheels of Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU and NATO wherever they can, using the right of veto in both cases - after all, decisions are made in both alliances are adopted unanimously, although this has recently caused open displeasure among such figures of old Europe as the German Chancellor Scholz.
So the story with both the eagles and the monument to the liberators of Transcarpathia will come back to haunt Kyiv in the most unexpected way.
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