Ukraine is working on a potential meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Heorhiy Tykhyi has said, without announcing a specific date or venue for the leaders’ contact.
He said this during a briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reports.
"We hope that this meeting will take place in the near future. I will not disclose the venue or the exact time. I will only confirm that we are working on this and have received certain positive signals that this meeting could take place shortly," Tykhyi said.
According to him, the agenda will be "fairly obvious." The MFA emphasized that Ukraine seeks to normalize bilateral relations.
"We have already seen certain positive progress on the most sensitive issues, such as the issue of national minorities. We have managed to unblock a very significant dialogue," the spokesperson added.
Separately, he emphasized that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and personally Minister Andrii Sybiha, is currently working very actively to restore restrictive measures against certain individuals, Russian citizens, whom the government of former Prime Minister Viktor Orban had removed from the sanctions lists.
As reported, Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar stated that within three weeks, a comprehensive agreement had been reached with Ukraine to expand the linguistic, educational, cultural, and political rights of the 100,000-strong Hungarian minority—something his predecessor Viktor Orban could not achieve in 10 years. According to him, Ukraine agreed to restore the school system for national minorities and to expand the use of the Hungarian language in education.
On June 4, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi stated that the agreements with Hungary in the field of education do not imply anything new for Ukraine. According to him, Ukraine ensures the functioning of schools, finances schools with Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Slovak, and Bulgarian languages of instruction, publishes textbooks, and will maintain and expand these opportunities.
Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Taras Kachka also stated that the agreements with Hungary do not envision fundamentally new things, but rather the implementation of the already adopted Action Plan for the protection of the rights of persons belonging to national minorities in Ukraine, with minor amendments.
According to Kachka, educational issues could be regulated by Ukraine as early as 2026, and all other matters by 2027.
Magyar previously declared his readiness to meet with Zelenskyy provided that an agreement is reached regarding the issue of the fundamental rights of the Hungarian minority.
