Hungary’s reset with Ukraine is good news for European deterrence
EXPERT COMMENT
Ending a dispute on minority rights would do more than progress Ukraine’s EU accession talks: it could strengthen the continent’s posture towards Moscow.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary has created the most visible fissure in European Union (EU) support for Kyiv. Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán dissented early on from the European consensus. And he progressively turned this dissent into political leverage. Budapest slowed sanctions on Russia, contested assistance to Ukraine, obstructed parts of Kyiv’s European path and blurred the moral and strategic line between aggressor and victim.
For Moscow, this mattered. Russia did not need Hungary to become an ally in any formal sense. It only needed an EU and NATO member state to make European unity appear conditional, reversible and transactional. Hungary’s role was therefore never only about Hungarian foreign policy. It was about the credibility of Europe’s collective resolve.
That is why Budapest’s emerging reset with Kyiv under newly elected Péter Magyar is important. Hungary and Ukraine have reached an understanding on a festering dispute over the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia.
The agreement removes one of the main obstacles to opening EU accession talks with Ukraine – allowing Kyiv to take the first step on a long road to EU membership. Magyar has also signalled his readiness to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy, presenting the issue as the beginning of a ‘new chapter’. The phrase may sound diplomatic, but the stakes are more strategic than they sound.
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