Ukraine demands that Hungary return 11 prisoners of war

Ukraine said on June 19, 2023, that Hungary ignored requests for contact with the prisoners of war that had been secretly transferred from Russia. Hungary, which has established close political and economic ties with Russia under prime minister Viktor Orbán and didn’t sever them even after Moscow invaded Ukraine, stated on June 9 that it accepted a group of 11 Ukrainians, who had been held as prisoners of war in Russia.

Hungarian officials also claimed that they freed Ukrainian POWs transferred from Russia by the Russian Orthodox Church. According to CNN, this was stated by Zoltán Kovács, Hungary’s state secretary for international communication.

He said that the Ukrainian soldiers had been freed in Russia after cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta. Meanwhile, Kovács claimed that the service members went to Hungary out of their own free will. He stressed that most of the soldiers had Hungarian citizenship, and the rest had received refugee status in Hungary.

"They are now free individuals who can stay in Hungary or leave Hungary at any time out of their own free will," Kovács said.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry claims that the conditions of the transferred POWs’ stay in Hungary aren’t consistent with their alleged free status and that the Hungarian side doesn’t engage in constructive dialog with Kyiv on this issue, according to Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesperson for the ministry.

"All attempts by Ukrainian diplomats during the last days to establish direct contact with Ukrainian citizens were unsuccessful. This, as well as the information received from the relatives of some of them, shows that the assurances of the Hungarian authorities about the allegedly free status of Ukrainian defenders in Hungary are not true," said Nikolenko.

According to him, Ukrainian soldiers are kept in isolation, do not have access to open sources of information, their communication with relatives takes place in the presence of third parties, and they are denied the right to establish contact with the Embassy of Ukraine. Any attempts by the Ukrainian side to establish constructive dialog with Hungarian authorities have been ignored by official diplomatic channels.

Nikolenko noted that such actions by Budapest call into question the declared humanitarian motives behind the transfer of Ukrainians to Hungary and can be qualified as a violation of the provisions of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine once again appealed to the Hungarian side with the demand to immediately allow the Ukrainian consul to visit the Ukrainian prisoners of war so that he could assess their physical and psychological condition, tell them about their rights, and provide urgent consular assistance," the spokesperson added.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, for his part, claimed that the operation to transfer the POWs was carried out solely in Orbán’s political interests.

"There was one simple goal: Orbán needed to show the Hungarians, both in Hungary and outside it, that he was their only protector. This whole operation was performed in the interests of one man," Kuleba noted.

Currently, 11 Ukrainian defenders who were held as prisoners of war by the aggressor country are staying in Hungary, as Oleh Kotenko, the Commissioner for Persons Missing in Special Circumstances, said on June 16.

"Currently, the names of our heroes and the route of their movement to Hungary have been established. Their relatives and relevant law enforcement agencies have been informed of this," Kotenko added.

He says that there had been "no information at all" about seven of the 11 prisoners whose whereabouts were established. Until they return to Ukrainian territory, they will be officially considered missing.

To provide information about persons missing in action, please call the hotline at 0 800 339 247 or the Commissioner at (099) 792-01-26 on weekdays or use Viber / Telegram at (095) 896-04-21 on weekends.