The head of Hungarian diplomacy Peter Szijjarto meets his counterpart Dmytro Kouleba on Monday in western Ukraine, ahead of a European summit focused on financial aid to the country at war after Budapest's recent veto.
Objective: prepare a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in order to
“find solutions”
to their differences and
“unblock crucial EU decisions for Ukraine”
, according to Kiev.
A sign of the extremely tense relations between the two neighbors, Peter Szijjarto has never set foot in Ukraine since the launch of the Russian offensive, although he has visited Moscow several times.
The meeting takes place in Ouzhhorod, where a large Magyar community resides.
Security measures were tightened after the Hungarian minister received a letter making death threats.
A quarrel that dates back to before the invasion
Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, will also be present.
Viktor Orban is the only European leader to have maintained close ties with the Kremlin, while maintaining complicated relations with Ukraine.
In December he blocked the payment of aid of 50 billion euros over four years to Ukraine.
He has since said he is ready to support Kiev but
“outside the common budget”
and with the possibility of an annual review.
An extraordinary summit is planned for Thursday in Brussels to try to find a compromise.
The nationalist leader also stood out by refusing to approve the EU's opening of accession negotiations with Ukraine, leaving the room at the time of the vote in mid-December.
And he keeps repeating that Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia, pleading for ceasefire negotiations with Moscow.
The quarrel between the two countries is not new and diplomatic relations had already deteriorated before the invasion, because Ukraine has adopted a series of controversial measures since 2017, notably on the teaching of the Ukrainian language.
In the interest of appeasement, kyiv recently adopted a law protecting the rights of minorities in Ukraine, a step which the Hungarian government however considered insufficient.
More than 100,000 Magyars live in Transcarpathia, a region in far western Ukraine which was under the control of Budapest until the First World War.