Kiev on Monday accused Budapest of blocking access to a group of Ukrainian prisoners of war transferred to Hungary from Russia through the intermediary of the Russian Orthodox Church and without the knowledge of the Ukrainian authorities.
“All attempts to establish direct contact with these Ukrainian citizens made by Ukrainian diplomats in the past few days have proven unsuccessful,” Ukrainian diplomatic spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said on Facebook.
Transferred to Hungary on June 8, these 11 Ukrainians “are de facto placed in solitary confinement, they have no access to open sources of information, their communication with relatives takes place in the presence of third parties”, denounced Mr. Nikolenko.
“Such acts by Budapest”, which has kept in touch with the Kremlin, “can be qualified as violations of the European Convention on Human Rights”, denounced the spokesperson.
According to him, Kyiv has “once again asked” the Hungarian government to “give the Ukrainian consul immediate access” to these prisoners of war “so that he can assess their physical and psychological condition, explain their rights and provide them with emergency consular assistance”.
This group of prisoners is from Transcarpathia, a region in western Ukraine that is home to a large Hungarian community.
His transfer to Hungary had been announced by the Russian Orthodox Church, which acted as an intermediary. Ukraine, for its part, regretted not having been involved in the negotiation process.
Accusations denied
Hungary defended itself from hindering access, claiming to act “in accordance with both the law and the practice in force at the international level”.
The 11 men “are not legally considered prisoners of war since they were released on Russian soil”, the Russian Orthodox Church having intervened later to organize their transfer, explained during a press conference in Budapest Gergely Gulyás, the chief of staff of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.
“They are here of their own free will, they can also leave the country freely at any time. We don’t monitor them,” he said, adding that those who were not Hungarian had been granted refugee status.
Mr. Orbán has maintained contact with Moscow despite the war in Ukraine and has forged strong ties with the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years. It is thanks to his support that the Russian patriarch Kirill, faithful supporter of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, escaped last year from the sanctions of the European Union in the name of the defense of “religious freedom”.
The Hungarian leader also maintains complicated relations with kyiv, which he refuses to help militarily in the face of the Russian invasion launched in February 2022.