Hungary’s New Leadership – More Moral Blindness and Manipulation?

Will Budapest’s hypocrisy toward Ukraine and European values and solidarity be continued? Make us preferred on Google Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied President of the European Council Antonio Costa (R) meets with Hungary's incoming Prime Minister Peter Magyar in Brussels on April 29, 2026. Magyar makes his first visit to EU chiefs since his election win, looking to turn the page on the bad blood of his nationalist predecessor's tenure. (Photo by JOHN THYS / AFP) Content Share Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn Bluesky Email Copy Copied Flip Make us preferred on Google Recently, many Ukrainians and Europeans expressed relief at hearing that Hungary’s prime minister, and de facto pro-Russian saboteur within the EU, Viktor Orbán, was decisively beaten in the country’s parliamentary election. It was hoped that his winning opponent, Peter Magyar, would help bring about a rapprochement with both the EU and his country’s war-afflicted neighbor, Ukraine. Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official . But all that glitters isn’t gold. And Magyar has already followed Orban’s path by continuing to exploit the issue of relations with Ukraine in bilateral agreements with both Brussels and Kyiv. Yes, he agreed not to veto the EU’s incoming massive financial assistance for Ukraine, which is significant – but he also, like his predecessor, continues to threaten to obstruct Ukraine’s enhanced joining the EU without accepting Budapest’s claims that the small Hungarian minority in the border Transcarpathian region is subject to alleged discrimination. So here too, he’s not playing fair, but is probably looking to bolster his position with his own domestic constituency, which isn’t conscious of the reality on the ground. So let’s recall the context. For years, Orbán presented himself as the great protector of Hungarians living beyond Hungary’s borders – in Romania’s Transylvania, in southern Slovakia, in Serbia’s Vojvodina, and in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia. Other Topics of Interest Pentagon Considers Withdrawing 5,000 Troops From Germany Over Iran Tensions The potential withdrawal of US forces follows President Trump’s frustration with European allies, including Chancellor Friedrich Merz, over their lack of support in the conflict with Iran. But on home soil in Hungary itself, a far different tale was unfolding. Budapest issued passports to ethnic Hungarians abroad, funded cultural institutions abroad (so-called regional clubs), and staged diplomatic protests whenever it was led to believe ethnic Hungarian speakers were discriminated against. Orbán never missed the chance to invoke the trauma of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon (the post-WWI settlement that left Hungary without two-thirds of its territory) – insisting that defending “the Hungarian nation” wherever its people live was a sacred obligation. But on home soil in Hungary itself, a far different tale was unfolding. And Hungary’s Roma population – between 600,000 and one million people, the largest ethnic minority in the country – faced discrimination so intense that if ethnic Hungarians in Bucharest or Bratislava suffered from anything of that nature, they could be greeted with worldwide condemnation. Here is the paradox that reveals everything: a government that insists on gold-standard minority protections for Hungarians abroad while also systematically refusing to provide the equivalent protections to minorities at home. The discrimination the Roma have faced in Hungary isn’t subtle. It’s quantifiable, tracked, and inarguable. The Council of Europe has published six separate reports detailing Hungary’s failures to protect Roma rights. Hungary ranked near the bottom of the European Union’s 2024 study on Roma status. But while Orbán’s government devoted resources to helping Hungarian minorities overseas – for cultural centers in Transylvania, scholarships in Slovakia, over a million passports written across the region – it consistently gutted programs for Roma at home. Advocacy groups were sidelined or smeared as foreign agents. The wounds caused by the Treaty of Trianon were real. Over three million ethnic Hungarians became minorities in neighboring countries. But Orbán didn’t seek healing or reconciliation via European institutions. He weaponized this memory to serve revisionist politics. His neighbors, the Ukrainians, did not do the same. They did not dwell on Hungary’s savage destruction in early 1939 of a short-lived attempt to establish an independent mini-Ukrainian “Piedmont” state in Transcarpathia as Czechoslovakia was disintegrating. Instead, they have acknowledged Hungary’s heroism in 1956, when Soviet tanks destroyed its efforts to liberate itself from Moscow’s clutches, and the fact that in the summer of 1990, Hungary was the first country to recognize Ukraine’s assertion of its sovereignty. Hungary began granting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians abroad in 2010, regardless of whether they had ever even crossed the border. This appeared to be a political project aimed at building a transnational electorate in favor of Orban’s Fidesz political party. Orbán’s speeches became increasingly blunt. At his annual appearances in Târgu Mureș, Transylvania, he claimed that a single Hungarian nation was tied by borders. In 2020, he would declare that Hungary would “never resign ourselves” to Trianon’s borders. Reminiscent of Hitler and the Sudetenland and Putin and “Russian” Ukraine? After came the concrete actions. Hungary funded Hungarian-language schools and political organizations across Transylvania, while fully evading Romanian authorities. Budapest directly provided funding to Hungarian movements in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine. Orbán suggested that Transylvania’s Hungarian population deserved “autonomy,” which Romania was right to take for a prelude to territorial claims. When Romania pushed back, Budapest threatened to block its entrance into the Schengen zone. In Ukraine’s Transcarpathia, Hungary shut down Ukraine’s access to NATO and EU membership over language disputes – while Russian tanks pushed across Ukraine’s boundaries. It issued Hungarian passports to Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian origin, despite the fact that dual citizenship, for security reasons or “the Russian factor,” has not been allowed to exist. As Ukraine enacted a 2017 education law mandating more instruction in Ukrainian, Hungary didn’t opt for dialogue through EU mechanisms. It blocked Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration. As Ukrainian soldiers were being killed in the war against Russia, Budapest blocked the EU’s military aid packages, threatened to veto sanctions imposed on Moscow, and kept gas imports from Russia flowing. It even suggested that Kyiv was exploiting citizens of Hungarian origin as cannon fodder. In December 2022, when Russia was attacking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and electrical grids, Hungary blocked an €18 billion ($21 billion) EU aid package for Ukraine. In 2023, it postponed a €500 million ($587 million) tranche of military aid. During the war, Budapest became the greatest obstacle to unified European support – not because of legitimate concern over the Hungarian minority in Ukraine, but because Orbán’s government prioritized its connection to Putin and its nationalist narrative over Ukrainian lives and European solidarity. Budapest requires Romanian universities to teach in Hungarian while ostracizing Roma children into educational ghettos, yet it threatens to block Ukraine’s European integration over “language policies.” There were some legitimate policy disagreements with Ukraine. Ukraine’s 2017 education law requires Ukrainian-language instruction after grade four, and the 2019 state language law restricts the use of minority languages in public life. But Budapest contends “systematic discrimination” against ethnic Hungarians, “disproportionate military recruitment” allegedly ferrying Hungarians to the front lines more often than Ukrainians, and “attacks on Hungarian facilities” by Ukrainian nationalists. None of these allegations stands up to scrutiny. International monitors found the Ukrainian constitutional framework for minorities to be compliant with international standards. In a state seeking to undo the damage caused by Soviet policies of Russification and bolster the position of the official language, the limited restrictions apply to all minorities – Romanians, Poles, and others – not just Hungarians. On April 28, the mayor of Berehove – a city in Transcarpathia with a considerable Hungarian presence – directly refuted the official narrative being promoted by Budapest, including Orban’s successor. In a meeting with Magyar, he implicitly suggested that the narrative of “oppression” is mendacious and cynical. Hungarian voters have overturned Orbán’s sixteen-year rule, electing Magyar’s alliance on promises of democratic restoration. So, here’s the question: Will the new government break with Orbán’s methods – or simply readapt them? And how will the EU respond? For years, Brussels allowed Orbán’s authoritarianism to take place while he crushed the independence of the judiciary, tried to repress press freedom, and debilitated democratic institutions. The rationale was always pragmatic: Hungary is a member state, and expulsion is not an option. But how much further can such tolerance go? If Magyar’s government keeps using Orbán’s playbook – to use minority rights as a weapon for territorial claims, blocking European solidarity with Ukraine, sustaining institutional discrimination against Roma – the EU will surely have to enforce its own standards. That is precisely the case for Article 7 procedures. Funds can be withheld. Voting rights can be suspended. There are responsibilities, not just the benefits, of membership. The question isn’t only about whether the Hungarian leadership will change its approach. It’s whether Europe and Kyiv will jointly say enough is enough. The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post. Bohdan Nahaylo, Chief Editor of Kyiv Post since December 2021, is a British-Ukrainian journalist, author and veteran Ukraine watcher based between Kyiv and Barcelona. He was formerly head of Amnesty International's Soviet Union unit, a senior United Nations official and policy adviser, and Director of Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service.