Ukraine: The Prime Minister of Hungary, Mr. Viktor Orbán, came under pressure to apologise after tweeting a video of himself at a football game wearing a scarf that featured ancient Hungary, including portions of Ukraine and neighbouring nations.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mr. Oleg Nikolenko stated that, Kyiv would summon Hungary’s Ambassador “who will be informed of the unacceptability of Viktor Orbán’s act.”
“The promotion of revisionism ideas in Hungary does not contribute to the development of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations and does not comply with the principles of European policy. We are waiting for an official apology from the Hungarian side and a refutation of the encroachments on the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Mr. Nikolenko wrote on Facebook.
Ukrainian media showed images of the Prime Minister interacting with a Hungarian footballer wearing a controversial scarf depicted a map of “Greater Hungary” including territory that is now part of the neighbouring states of Ukraine, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Croatia and Serbia.
The Foreign Ministry of Romania also reacted furiously stating that, it had expressed its “firm disapproval of the gesture” to the Hungarian envoy in Bucharest.
Mr. Orbán frequently incites problems with its neighbouring countries by bringing up Hungary’s pre-First World War territory. Hungary and Ukraine have frequently battled in recent years over what Hungary claimed were restrictions on the ability of ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine to speak their native tongue, particularly in education after Ukraine approved a law prohibiting the use of minority languages in schools in 2017.
Two million ethnic Hungarians, including 1.2 million in Romania and 150,000 in Ukraine, reside in the neighbouring countries.