Fact check: Are Transcarpathian Hungarian soldiers really being taken to Orbán if they surrender to the Russians?

We noticed a statement about Hungarian soldiers from Transcarpathia (the region of Ukraine which is home to a significant Hungarian minority population) in the post of Magyar Békekör Egyesület (Hungarian Association for Peace), according to which "Russian military expert Igor Korotchenko [...] advised the Hungarian soldiers from Transcarpathia who were forced to join the Ukrainian army, to surrender to the Russian army as soon as they got to the front". According to Békekör's correspondent, the Hungarian prisoners of war will be airlifted to Budapest and handed over to Viktor Orbán. According to Békekör, the statement was made on Tuesday, 24 January, on the TV channel Rossiya 1's 60 Minutes program.

Magyar Békekör Egyesület is a typically pro-Russian group, with their beliefs being somewhat parallel to those of the Hungarian government:

“Magyar Békekör Egyesület was founded by Endre Simó in early 2014 to voice the Hungarian people's desire for peace in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis, to speak out for the autonomous rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, and against Kyiv's use of Hungarian youth as cannon fodder in its war against the Russian minority in eastern Ukraine. We are engaged in civil diplomacy against the deployment of heavy weaponry from the US and NATO forces into Hungary, lest they turn our country into a staging ground and drag it into war against Russia.”

We found the claim about Transcarpathian Hungarians in another Hungarian source, which clarified the matter a bit: according to the strongly pro-government elemi.hu, Korotchenko only proposed "the evacuation of Transcarpathian Hungarians forcibly conscripted into the Ukrainian army". According to the article, the main claims of the expert were the following:

• "It is very important that, using our information resources, we advise Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian nationality: when they get to the front, they should escape across the front line at the first opportunity and surrender to the Russian armed forces."
• "I think we will take the necessary decisions to hand over these Hungarians – who are being forced to fight against Russia – to Viktor Orbán's government."
• “We will establish a direct Moscow-Budapest air link.”

Clearly, in this writing, Korotchenko's proposals appear more as a fait accompli in relation to the transfer of surrendering Transcarpathian soldiers to Hungary.

Through the Russian social networking site VKontakt (VK), the Legion of St. Stephen has sent the National Internet Monitor (Nemzeti Internetfigyelő) the excerpt in question, in which Igor Korotchenko allegedly says this.

The claim is worth checking in two parts: first, whether Korotchenko actually said this in the TV program, and second, whether what he claims is true.

Igor Korotchenko is Chairman of the Central Council under the Russian Ministry of Defense, a journalist and a regular contributor to Russian propaganda TV programs as a defense and foreign policy expert. The interview clip published by the National Internet Monitor does indeed feature Korotchenko, and although the program itself is not identified, based on other videos and images available online, it can be fairly conclusively identified as being from the program called 60 Minutes which runs on Rossiya 1 TV.

The message also broadly corresponds to what Magyar Békekör Egyesület and other media have highlighted, with Korotchenko saying the following:

“The violent mobilization of national minorities – including Hungarians – has begun in Ukraine. It is very important that we use our information capabilities to inform Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian nationality who are now being forcibly mobilized and transferred to the territory of the special military operation to come across the front line at the first opportunity and surrender to the Russian armed forces. I think we will be making the necessary decisions to hand over these people of Hungarian nationality, who are being forced to fight against Russia, to Viktor Orbán's government. We will launch a direct flight between Moscow and Budapest and all Hungarian soldiers who have been forcibly mobilized by Ukrainian forces will be transferred to Hungary. There, I assume, Viktor Orbán's government will find a way to support them.”

In the interview, Korotchenko also states that he believes that Hungary is in a difficult position because, despite being a member of NATO and the European Union, it does not engage in extreme forms of political and military aggression against Russia.

We have contacted the Foreign Ministry and Bertalan Havasi, Viktor Orbán's Press Chief, about the veracity of the interview's content. We asked him whether it was true that the surrendering Transcarpathian Hungarian soldiers would be repatriated and handed over to Viktor Orbán, and if so, how this would be done. We did not get a reply from the Foreign Ministry, but we did get a very succinct one from Bertalan Havasi:

“fake news”

- The Press Chief wrote.