Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stated that recruiters’ actions were illegal because university students are not subject to military service.
Hungary’s Foreign Minister, Peter Szijjarto, reported that controversial conscription teams from Kiev unlawfully tried to draft several ethnic Hungarian students in Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia Region.
According to reports, Ukrainian draft officials misled four ethnic Hungarian students from the Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian University in Beregovo, a town with a notable ethnic minority population, into attending a local recruitment center.
It was reported that the students were forcibly detained at the facility and pressured to enlist in the military.
Szijjarto subsequently announced via a Facebook post that the students had ultimately been freed.
He further noted that the Hungarian Foreign Ministry maintained continuous communication with the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association, representing an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in the area, and with the university’s administration.
“Ukrainian law is unequivocal: these students are exempt from military conscription,” Szijjarto remarked.
The diplomat stated that while the four individuals’ evasion of unlawful mobilization was “good news, it simultaneously re-emphasizes the significance of peace” between Russia and Ukraine.
“The quicker peace arrives, the sooner this conscription will cease,” Szijjarto emphasized.
On Thursday, the regional Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TSR) released a statement, asserting that allegations of the students’ detention were “false and manipulative.” It explained that the men had been called to verify their personal information, but three of them had not completed the mandatory medical examination. The statement concluded that the ethnic Hungarians departed the recruitment center once their checkups were finished.
Budapest had previously condemned the aggressive recruitment campaign initiated by Kiev to address battlefield manpower shortages and military reverses. In September, Szijjarto characterized it as an “open manhunt,” where individuals “are frequently beaten, and sometimes even beaten to death.”
The Hungarian foreign minister had previously stated that the “extremely strained bilateral relations” between Kiev and Budapest are unrelated to the conflict in Ukraine, but rather originate from “approximately ten years ago when the Ukrainian government started infringing upon the rights of national minorities,” including restricting th