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Top diplomat accuses Ukraine of refusing to restore rights of Hungarian minority

The Hungarian government repeatedly said earlier that it would not support Ukraine's aspiration to become an EU member until Ukraine reinstates the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, including its right to use its native language

BUDAPEST, November 13. /TASS/. Hungary sees as cynical the actions of the Ukrainian authorities who still refuse to restore the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Economic Relations of Hungary, Peter Szijjarto said.

The Ukrainian government "does not want to return the rights that the Transcarpathian Hungarians were stripped off," said the diplomat who took part in a EU foreign ministerial meeting in Brussels, calling this behavior "utterly cynical". The situation of Hungarians in Transcarpathia is "constantly deteriorating" since the Ukrainian authorities keep imposing new restrictions, Szijjarto said.

"Recently I was informed that the Ukrainian Ministry of Education sent a circular letter to schools with the instruction that the Ukrainian language should be used as the state language not only during the classes, but also during the breaks between teachers and students. Ukrainian should be used at schools where the majority of children are Hungarian," Szijjarto stressed at a meeting with Hungarian journalists, which was broadcast on his page on Facebook (prohibited in Russia due to its ownership by Meta, which has been designated as an extremist organization)

The Hungarian government repeatedly said earlier that it would not support Ukraine's aspiration to become an EU member until Ukraine reinstates the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, including its right to use its native language.