Macaristan-Ukrayna Gerilimi Devam Ediyor
Orbán'dan sonra bile Macaristan-Ukrayna gerilimi devam ediyor.
Hungarian-Ukrainian tensions are rising once again, with the latest friction over an oil-storage memorandum adding to a dispute about Hungary’s participation in Ukraine’s Carpathian Eight summit.
Ukraine’s state oil and gas company (Naftogaz) has moved to build storage sites in Hungary - amid fears of winter strikes on its energy infrastructure.
The C8 summit controversy arose because Kyiv presented Budapest as a member of its new Carpathian Eight regional forum - a new regional cooperation framework focused on matters like security and energy, comprising Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria, plus (and here is the issue) Hungary.
Prime Minister Péter Magyar, however, has said Hungary had never actually consented to joining.
It turns out Kyiv regarded Hungary’s diplomatic representation as participation, whereas Budapest said its chargé d’affaires was only an observer.
The oil dispute followed after Ukraine’s Naftogaz and Hungary’s MOL announced a memorandum to explore storing Ukrainian fuel and petroleum products in Hungary - which Magyar opposed on security and political grounds, arguing that MOL should have consulted the Hungarian government first.
These frictions came on top of the separate, unresolved Hungarian-minority rights problems - they, as Euronews put it, expose just how fragile Kyiv-Budapest ties remain.
Many observers expected a somewhat smoother Ukrainian-Hungarian relationship after Viktor Orban left office. During the 2026 campaign Orban declared that “Hungary will never be a Ukrainian colony” amid increasingly heated rhetoric.
It is true that the new government under Péter Magyar has shifted Hungary’s broader foreign policy in some ways - and some analysts predicted warmer ties with Kyiv alongside a “tougher” line toward Moscow. Yet the underlying bilateral issues seem to remain stubbornly in place.
Political scientist Sonja Priebus, of the European University Viadrina, noted right after the election that “bilateral conflicts with Kyiv are likely to persist”
That assessment has proved accurate enough. Budapest, once more, has recently blocked progress in Kyiv’s EU accession process - while the Transcarpathia ethnic issue continues.
Even a Carnegie’s generally positive assessment of the “pro-Western” new administration admits that “some tensions persist over the matter of the rights of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine”.
The core of the conflict here is institutional, with an ethnopolitical element. It centers on the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia, on language, education and cultural rights, and on Budapest’s view of its own national interests next to Ukraine.
These questions of course did not vanish with Orban. As a matter of fact, they predate him, having outlasted his administration.
Moreover, this pattern is even wider than Hungary alone. Post-Maidan Ukraine has strained ties with nearly all its neighbors - beyond Russia.
This has roots in the way Post-Soviet-era borders were drawn and in the strong nationalist current that has shaped Kyiv’s policies since 2014. Ukrainian ultra-nationalism, often far-right in character, has alienated ethnic communities and neighboring capitals alike.
I have written before that any discussion of modern Ukrainian identity also needs to take into account its long and complicated history with Poland, including the ongoing glorification of the Nazi collaborator Ukrainian Insurgent Army - which Western and Ukrainian historians acknowledge committed mass killings of Poles during the Second World War, often described as genocide.
Similar frictions are a factor in relations with Romania and even Greece - over the treatment of ethnic kin in places like Mariupol.
Romanian and Hungarian communities inside Ukraine have reported harassment, while the Ukrainian minority-rights legislation has also drawn criticism from European bodies. The Venice Commission, for example, has raised concerns over education in minority languages and the differential treatment of different linguistic groups.
These problems remain underreported in much Western coverage, yet they generate real instability.
Far-right influence and the elevation of controversial historical figures have fueled perceptions of threat among neighbors.
Earlier spy scandals and friction over ethnic and cultural rights between Kyiv and Budapest already pointed in this direction.
The evidence therefore shows that Hungary’s difficulties with Ukraine were never merely a product of Orban’s long tenure. Péter Magyar may have altered the country’s wider foreign policy orientation in a number of ways, yet the ethnopolitical tensions rooted in Transcarpathia and in Hungarian national interests continue.
As long as questions of communities’ civil rights and historical grievances remain unresolved, conflict with Ukraine’s neighbors will remain a structural feature of the regional landscape - and a source of instability. Thus far, practical deals on oil storage have not altered that reality.
