BEREHOVE, Ukraine -- A foreign leader whose country pines for its lost empire advocates self-rule for a Ukrainian province and gives passports to its residents. The call resonates among many in the region, where tens of thousands of people don't even speak the Ukrainian language.
A foreign leader whose country pines for it’s lost empire while advocating for self rule for a Ukrainian province!? Putin? Russia? No and no.Which leader and what nation? Viktor Orban and HungaryBriefly: Think Kingdom of Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia (now part of Ukraine) Why is it we are not getting an overload of information on this threat to the territory and stability of the Ukraine?
This is happening along Ukraine's westernmost tip, in the Zakarpattia region. And the foreign leader stirring the ethnic pot isn't Russia's Vladimir Putin, but Viktor Orban, the prime minister of European Union-member Hungary."Ukraine can be neither stable nor democratic if it does not give its minorities, including Hungarians, their due," Orban said recently.
Uhoh!
Hungarian calls for self-rule in the region show that simmering discontent among ethnic minorities is not just a problem in Ukraine's restive east. And it illustrates that Russia may not be the only neighboring country seeking to capitalize on Ukraine's fragile state following the Euromaidan uprising.
Hungarian calls for self-rule? Where is the outrage from the west? Why isn't the NATO media screaming endlessly about Hungary and Hungary's despotic leadership?Simmering discontent? Why is no one from NATO finger pointing at Hungary and it’s political class?
In places like Berehove, a city of 24,000, 5 kilometers from the Hungarian border, it's clear that Budapest has done more than pay lip service to its desire to create a "national reunification" beyond its borders
-Children can go to Budapest-funded Hungarian schools and adults can make pilgrimages to monuments dedicated to Hungarian heroes. -Ethnic Hungarians can enter Hungary on Hungarian passports and they can vote in Hungarian elections.
Are you noticing the glaring double standard between EU member Hungary’s involvement with the ethnic Hungarians and Russia’s involvement with their ethnic population
And for the first time, Orban's ruling Fidesz party is sending a Zakarpattia resident to Brussels to represent Hungary in the European Parliament.
"Orban wants to claim that he has symbolically united the nation," says Szabolcs Pogonyi, a professor of nationalism studies at Central European University in Budapest.
A Hungarian extreme-right party, Jobbik, which received 20 percent of the vote in the April parliamentary elections, has called for those lands to rejoin Hungary proper.
Orban, for his part, has stuck to promoting a form of "cultural autonomy" also supported by local ethnic Hungarian leaders.A declaration signed in late March by 37 NGOs asks that the community be recognized as "a state-forming, native nation" within Ukraine. It also indirectly references isolated threats by Ukrainian nationalists, including the desecration of a Hungarian monument.
Monuments such as this?A monument in Uzhhorod to Sandor Petofi, a Hungarian poet and revolutionary, is one of many tributes to Hungarian figures in Zakarpattia.Threats from Ukrainian nationalists?! According to the NATO media and the puppets in Kiev, Ukrainian nationalists are no problemo!
Speaking to RFE/RL In the Zakarpattia state administration building in Uzhhorod, a city whose cobblestone roads wind down to the Uzh River from a centuries-old Hungarian castle, Laszlo Brenzovics says, "It's the right of our people to decide questions on our own."
Laszlo Brenzovics, who leads Ukraine's Hungarian community, tells RFE/RL too many local decisions are made by Kyiv
"Right now we have this system -- it's really, really centralized. And all questions are decided by Kyiv and only by Kyiv," says Brenzovics, who is the official head of the ethnic Hungarian community and a regional parliament deputy. "This isn't democracy or self-rule."
Language Grievances
A law passed in 2012 allowed administrative districts in Ukraine where an ethnic minority comprises more than 10 percent of the population to establish official regional languages that could be used in public institutions, including schools.
Hmmmmmm..... Hypocrisy? Double Standards? Duplicity?Is it completely apparent to you? It sure is to me? Hungary is working to destabilize the monolith of “the Ukraine”Setting up schoolsIssuing passportsEncouraging involvement in the politics of another nationEncouraging separationAnd the NATO media says nothing, well, next to nothing. The reporting is certainly less hysterical.Perception management