In Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Magyar’s opposition Tisza party clearly defeated the Fidesz government party of Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán, who based a large part of his election campaign on criticism of Ukraine. The prime minister, who maintained friendly relations with Russia and at the level of the European Union, blocked a number of measures to help the defending Ukraine, ends up as head of the Hungarian government.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs cancels the previous advice to citizens to refrain from traveling to Hungary,” Sybiha said on Facebook. “The election campaign, which was unfortunately full of manipulations directed against Ukraine, is already behind us. The increased risks of provocations, due to which these restrictions were introduced, have also passed away,” he added.
At the same time, Sybiha warned against unrealistic expectations regarding the improvement of relations between Kyiv and the new government in Budapest. “Careful, pragmatic and calm work awaits us in finding points of contact, restoring mutual respect and fulfilling common pragmatic interests,” wrote the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, saying that Ukraine intends to work to restore good neighborly relations with Hungary in the interest of both our countries and Europe as a whole.
They let people go, they kept the money
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyiv issued a recommendation to citizens not to travel to Hungary at the beginning of March in response to the detention of employees of the state-owned Ukrainian bank Oščadbank, who were transporting cash and gold from Austria to Ukraine. According to the Hungarian authorities, they were suspected of money laundering. While the authorities eventually released the Ukrainians, they kept the shipment.
Disputes between Budapest and Kyiv in recent weeks mainly concerned the interruption of the transport of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia. According to Kyiv, this happened as a result of the Russian attack on the infrastructure in the Ukrainian part of the pipeline. Bratislava and Budapest, on the other hand, accused Ukraine of delaying the resumption of supplies of raw materials for political reasons.
