The Hungarians in Transcarpathia. Bridge or Gap in the Relations of Hungary and Ukraine.

Hungary and Ukraine share a millennium of intertwined history, with cooperation and conflict often converging around the borderland of Transcarpathia. Since Ukraine’s independence, this region’s mixed population has been both a bridge and a source of dispute between the two neighbors. The presentation examines how recent political shifts have reshaped the relationship. The Revolution of Dignity, Crimea’s annexation, and the war in Donbass pushed Kyiv toward stricter language and education policies, triggering tensions with Budapest over minority rights. These disputes soon became central to Ukraine’s EU accession process, where Hungary played a decisive role. More recent developments suggest change: Ukraine’s 2023 reforms easing restrictions on minority languages, alongside demographic transformations in Transcarpathia caused by wartime displacement. By analyzing the Hungarian community’s position within Ukraine’s evolving landscape, the talk explored how minority rights, security concerns, and shifting identities shape the future of Hungarian–Ukrainian relations in the postwar order.

 

Historian Sándor Seremet is senior research fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs, and the Eurasia Center of John von Neumann University. He earned his MA degree in History at the Uzhhorod National University (UA), then continued his PhD studies in 2013 in History at Pázmány Péter Catholic University. He worked as a historian at the House of Terror Museum between 2013 and 2014. In 2014, Sándor Seremet continued his research at the Charles University of Prague as a scholar of the International Visegrad Fund. He defended his PhD thesis in 2016 at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, the topic of his thesis was the historical process of the creation of the border of today’s Transcarpathia. From 2020, he has been an Associate Research Fellow of the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade, then from November 2022, a researcher at the Eurasia Center. One year later, he was named Senior Research Fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs. Dr. Seremet's main research topic is the economic and political processes of the post-Soviet countries with special focus on Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and the South Caucasus.