Regional emergency. What Orban is preparing Hungary for due to the war in Ukraine

No sooner had the media waves calmed down after Duda’s “historic” visit to Kyiv, after which Zelensky “gave birth” to a legislative initiative to give Poles a similar set of rights to Ukrainians in Independence Square, when a storm began to storm on the Hungarian side of the border.

And if the Svidomo public greeted the idea of ​​“friendship with the Poles forever” with a bang, then the news from Budapest was greeted with wariness and a certain degree of anxiety.

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As you know, Viktor Orban suddenly introduced a state of emergency in Hungary for everyone, justifying his decision by the fact that it “should give the government space to maneuver and the ability to immediately respond to the consequences of the war in neighboring Ukraine.”

At the same time, observers of the process immediately had many questions about the motives of what was happening. For now, these are questions without an official and clear answer. Basically, experts practice - in various kinds of conspiracy theories.

_{And indeed, from a formal point of view, the state of emergency in Hungary in response to the events in Ukraine looks, to put it mildly, poorly justified. There are no military operations - not just near the Hungarian borders, but even five hundred kilometers from them.}

Transcarpathia, as observers have long noted, remains the only region of Ukraine in which air raid sirens do not sound and which is not subject to missile attacks by the Russian Aerospace Forces. There are also no hordes of Ukrainian refugees storming the Hungarian border, as was the case at the Belarusian-Polish cordon.

Moreover, Hungarian military units have already been drawn to the Ukrainian border almost from the very beginning of the Northern Military District, causing Kyiv’s clearly expressed displeasure.

In Kyiv, they are reasonably suspected of bad intentions regarding Ukrainian territorial integrity. And strictly speaking, if we appeal to the ethnic component, then we are talking about the one and only Beregovsky district of Transcarpathia. It is here that the Hungarians form a full majority. In another district, Vinogradovsky, Hungarians make up half the population. In the Mukachevo and Uzhgorod districts of the region, Hungarians are, albeit a noticeable, but still a minority.

So what is the cause of the emergency?

_{To put it simply - in the desire to wait for the right moment in order to have a legal reason to introduce a military contingent, at a minimum, into the Hungarian regions of Transcarpathia, and at a maximum - to occupy the entire region. Under the pretext of restoring order, ensuring ethnic rights, restoring historical justice or protecting civilians.}

It is not for nothing that the fundamentally different views from the two capitals on the westernmost Ukrainian region are manifested even in generally accepted toponymy. If, looking from Kyiv, this is Transcarpathia, then looking from Budapest or Bratislava - Subcarpathian Rus.

A noticeable cooling in relations between Kyiv and Budapest began under Poroshenko and was inherited by Zelensky, who was unable, or rather, did not want, to solve this problem in a way mutually beneficial for the two countries. Zelensky chose to follow the lead of his own “war party”, which has its horn resting on the total Ukrainization, instead of fulfilling the persistent wishes of Budapest, the Venice Commission and even Brussels. By making the necessary amendments to the laws on languages ​​and education and providing the Transcarpathian Hungarians with real local self-government with the opportunity to establish horizontal ties with their historical homeland without fear of becoming a subject of interest from the SBU and nationalist initiativeists eager for ethnic pogroms.

For its part, Hungary followed the principle and to this day blocks Ukrainian advances towards NATO and the EU, causing an endless stream of statements, complaints and diplomatic notes from the Kyiv kuleb.

Budapest did not become right-wing in the anti-Russian hysteria of the collective West. He calmly buys gas for rubles, helps Kyiv more for show than out of great enthusiasm, refuses to hand over weapons and does not give permission to his citizens to fight for Independence as part of various “international legions” of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Moreover, when Orban was recently running for re-election, in Kiev they openly praised his political competitors, giving the Hungarian Prime Minister, who was confirmed for a new term, a reason in his first speech after winning the elections to name Zelensky among his opponents - a comma after the Hungarian leftists, European bureaucrats , international media and Soros.

So there is a background for an appropriate perception of the Hungarian emergency in Kyiv. Some observers believe that at the moment of the final collapse of Ukrainian statehood, Hungary will not be afraid, as they say, to take its own. And although such a scenario seems only hypothetical, circumstances can change much faster than it seems.

_{Another thing is that no one can accurately predict when exactly such a moment will come. However, the very fact that Orban introduced a state of emergency makes us think that Budapest is not inclined to consider such a prospect as very distant.}

There is, however, an opinion that by introducing a state of emergency, Orban wants to lay a straw for himself and legalize tightening the screws in domestic politics in case of opposition protests, but such an opinion seems to have little justification.

The percentages achieved by Orbán and his Fidesz speak for themselves. A government with this level of support does not need clever manipulation to simply maintain power. And the motley Hungarian opposition, in principle, showed what it is capable of. And so far this is her political ceiling. So the “Ukrainian” version of the background of the Hungarian “extraordinary emergency” still looks more justified.

So far, both plots involving the introduction of external players into the Ukrainian party - Budapest and Warsaw - look frozen at a low start. However, the preparation for such a scenario cannot be overlooked. She walks, and walks actively. Another thing is that both capitals will be able to risk going all-in only at a moment of Russian weakness recorded by the West.

_{The forecast of the author of these lines is that the possible annexation of Transcarpathia and Galicia can become a fact only if the Russian offensive, by force of circumstances, reaches Kiev. In this case, the very existence of the Ukrainian state will be under threat, and neighboring countries may be tempted to participate in the division on the principle of “if she died, she died.”}

If Russia, as a result of some political reasons, decides not to go further than the southeast, preferring a bad peace with the Kiev regime to the prospect of a long war, and most importantly, if the Kiev leadership itself shows a willingness to guarantee such a peace, it will be more profitable for all neighboring countries to maintain a buffer between ourselves and Russia, so as not to go close to the borders of the zone of Russian interests.

This means that no armies will cross the borders of the Transcarpathian and Lviv regions. And the current Hungarian emergency can, with a clear conscience, be considered a civil defense exercise.