Faith in victory was replaced by war fatigue on the second anniversary of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Transcarpathia was spared the fighting, but the war initiated changes that changed the Hungarian-inhabited areas forever.
Transcarpathian Hungarians are waiting for changes in the law that will restore their rights. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has brought radical and spectacular changes to Transcarpathia, mainly due to the refugees coming from Eastern Ukraine and large capitalist enterprises moving to the areas of the country spared from the fighting.
talked about this in the Spirit FM program .
The editor of Kárpáti Igaz Szó pointed out that the whole of Ukraine is characterized by war fatigue. While everyone was optimistic at the beginning of the war, today the whole country trusts in the end of the fighting and in the end of the war as favorable as possible for them.
The men disappeared from the streets
The population of Transcarpathia before the conflict was 1.2 million. According to György Dunda, there are no exact data on how the population changed with the arrival of the refugees, but according to estimates, 250-300 thousand people settled in the area. Those who came from Eastern Ukraine mainly came to the bigger cities. This is clearly visible, for example, in Ungvár, where housing construction has started on an unprecedented scale, and you can see huge investments in housing estates everywhere.
In the Transcarpathian villages and smaller settlements inhabited mostly by Hungarians, it is not the internal refugees that cause spectacular changes, but the fact that conscripted men have practically disappeared from the streets.
This is because many people work from home. Anyone who cannot do this because they work in a factory has either given up their job or is taking a risk. György Dunda recalled the case when the authorities raided a bus transporting workers and conscripted men of conscription age who were going to work. That's why most people don't even go out into the street, and in many families the women took over the tasks, in many cases they went to work in order to protect their loved ones from the draft.
György Dunda drew attention to the fact that, according to the previous summation of the Ukrainian ambassador in Budapest, Sándor Fegyír, who has not yet taken his place in Budapest, at least 400 Transcarpathian Hungarians with Hungarian roots are fighting against the Russians. The number of victims may be around 40.
Hungarian entrepreneurs are losing market
The situation of Transcarpathian Hungarian entrepreneurs and local small and medium-sized enterprises is also complicated by the conflict in eastern Ukraine. At the same time, György Dunda warned that it meant a serious loss of market for the smaller companies that, in addition to the internal refugees, entrepreneurs with strong capital from eastern and southeastern Ukraine also relocated to the western counties of the country.
Local businesses, which sold on the local markets even before the fighting, have no chance against the rich, well-capitalized large Ukrainian companies, from which they are increasingly being pushed out.
The rights of Hungarians are restored, but many do not return
The editor of Kárpáti Igaz Szó is not very optimistic about the intentions of the refugees. György Dunda pointed out: it is true not only for the population of Subcarpathia, but also for the whole of Ukraine, that at the beginning of the war, most of them fled so that they could return home after a few weeks, at most a few months.
At the beginning of the conflict, no one would have thought that the war would drag on for even a year, and absolutely no one would have thought that even after two years there would be peace.
So a lot of time has passed since the start of the war. Many people who fled found work in the host country and enrolled their children in kindergarten and school. Most of them integrated into their new environment and got used to the situation. At the same time, it is also true that there are many people who can't wait to return to Transcarpathia.
György Dunda emphasized: war is not good for anyone, and peace is also very important, under what conditions it comes. That is why he cannot consider the situation of the minorities living in Ukraine, such as the Hungarian minority, as having benefited from Russian aggression. He also drew attention to the fact that at the beginning of December, the Ukrainian parliament adopted the law that enables changes to the laws passed in 2015 that restrict the use of languages and the rights of minorities in relation to education.
but the relevant laws have not yet been touched upon, so the situation persists, for which Budapest has been criticizing Kyiv for years.
The settlement of the relationship between Hungary and Ukraine and the direct dialogue between the leaders of the two countries, replacing messages, is definitely beneficial for the Transcarpathian Hungarians. He added: the restoration of the rights of Ukrainians and minorities arriving and settling in Transcarpathia creates a new situation, that is, the local communities must already plan for the post-war times and what opportunities the locals can see in the future in the radical changes.
Featured image: Béla Varga / MTI
