Ethnic minorities living in Ukraine, including the Hungarians, are being drafted to the Ukrainian army in larger numbers than their proportion to the rest of the population. Bernadett Szѐl, a member of Hungary’s Green Party LMP, described the situation as “grave” and added that Hungary needs to step up and do more to protect their ethnic kin in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine started the fourth wave of mobilization on January 20. About 62,000 draftees already received their call-up orders and will be sent to the army within the next few months.
Last week, Ukrainian hacker group CyberBerkut leaked a number of classified documents from Ukraine’s top military circles, revealing massive casualties and terrible morale among the Kiev troops fighting in eastern Ukraine. According to these documents, the government in Kiev is struggling to keep things under control, desperately trying to cover up the real situation in the country’s east.
As the military conflict becomes prolonged and more blood is getting spilled, many choose to flee the country to avoid being sent to the war zone. Kiev is desperately trying to scrape together a bigger army and Ukraine’s ethnic minorities are first to get drafted, in disproportionally high numbers.
According to the latest census, around 150,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Transcarpathia, a region which had belonged to Hungary before the First World War, to Czechoslovakia in the interwar period and to the Soviet Union following the Second World War, and which later became part of the independent Ukraine in 1991.
