The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó was added to the database of the Ukrainian doxing site “Mirotvorets” (Peacekeeper). This has come as a reaction from Kiev to the alleged attempts of the Hungarian top diplomat “[to undermine] Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity: direct threats of an armed attack on Ukraine”.
Shortly before the publication of his profile on the extremist website Mr. Szijjártó held a press conference in Budapest on September 23, 2018. Talking on the agenda of the upcoming bilateral meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the UN General assembly he said that not only the rights of the Hungarian national community in Ukraine are in danger, but the community itself is in a state of disenfranchisement. He explained that its members had been stripped of the right to study in their native language, to hold Hungarian cultural events and the operations of Hungarian language media had also been made impossible.
According to the Hungarian minister the Ukrainian secret services have begun pestering certain members of the Hungarian national community, calls for action against people with dual citizenship are now openly appearing on various websites, Hungarian diplomats are suffering regular insults, and people who are linked to the foundation that is involved in the economic development program being financed by the Hungarian government have been “invited for questioning” on several occasions. Moreover, Ukraine went further than ever before in contravention of all of the existing rules of diplomacy, a secret service operation was conducted at one of Hungary’s consulates in Ukraine, at the representation of a NATO member state and on Hungarian territory.
On September 30, 2018 Tamás Menczer, the spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told at a press conference that anti-Hungarian attacks in Ukraine are occurring with the involvement of the administration and state. He pointed out that the head of the foreign minister’s security team had been informed of Mr. Szijjártó’s inclusion on the list on the Ukrainian extremist website, and the required measures had been taken.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin (L) and Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary Péter Szijjártó
It couldn’t have been otherwise. The “Mirotvorets” website, linked with Ukrainian parliament member, Interior Ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko, was created in 2014 for searching the identities of Donbass militiamen and their supporters. According to Benjamin Moreau, the deputy head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission, the website violates the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence. The website blacklists all those suspected of what its editors regard as crimes against Ukraine’s national security.
Speaking at a panel discussion titled “Threats to Freedom of Speech in Ukraine” held by Ukraine’s National Union of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists in Kiev in March this year Moreau noted that some banks refuse to provide financial services to the people who have been added to “Mirotvorets”. Moreau emphasized that the mission had been monitoring the investigation into the murder of two journalists, Pavel Sheremet and Oles Buzina. The Ukrainian journalist and writer Oles Buzina was killed in Kiev right after his profile was published on the extremist website. Moreau also noted that the presence of a large group of extremists at the trial on Buzina’s murder had made a very negative impression on the mission’s members and urged the law enforcement agencies to take measures to ensure the judicial independence.
On September 25, 2018 “Mirotvorets” published personal data of Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Now the time has come for the Hungarian minister. Is it a kind of a new line in the Ukrainian foreign policy? It seems that the Kiev authorities think that their methods work or they believe in their impunity.
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