Europe | Uneasy minority

Ethnic Hungarians have been having a tricky time in Ukraine

Hungary’s support for Russia has been a problem

2JH2Y1E aerial view of palanok castle autumn season
Image: Alamy
|KIDOSH

“This is not our war,” says Dorottya, a kindergarten janitor, using the words of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister. “This is a Hungarian village.” But Kidosh is in Ukraine, ten kilometres from the border, in a belt along the frontier inhabited mostly by ethnic Hungarians. Gabor, her 14-year-old son, says he does not feel Ukrainian, does not speak Ukrainian and since “life is not good here”, he wants to go to a boarding school in Hungary, whence he will probably never return.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “An uneasy minority”

From the March 18th 2023 edition

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