“We have decided to release two prisoners of war, as requested by the Prime Minister [Viktor Orbán], and they will be able to take them with them on the plane that brought them here and will take them back to Budapest” – Vladimir Putin announced during his meeting with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó in Moscow on Wednesday. The Russian President said that the two prisoners of war, who were "forcibly conscripted" into the Ukrainian army, are Ukrainian-Hungarian dual citizens. The Foreign Minister later posted a video of himself meeting the two prisoners of war on the plane.
Péter Szijjártó had previously shared a live video from Moscow, in which he said that due to Ukrainian "forced conscription," many ethnic Hungarians had been sent to the front, where many had died or disappeared, and some had been taken prisoner by the Russians, but said he hoped that two such prisoners of war would be able to fly back to Budapest with him. At the meeting with Putin, he said almost the same thing word for word to the Russian president, who then made his announcement.
The ethnic Hungarians from Transcarpathia who fell into Russian captivity have been the subject of the Hungarian government's communication and pro-government media for some time now. For example, in its program entitled The Horrors of War, the public television recently broadcast videos in which ethnic Hungarians from Transcarpathia held captive by Russia expressed their gratitude to their Russian captors for allowing them to survive. Tamás Hoffmann, a lawyer specializing in international law and associate professor at the Department of International Relations at Corvinus University of Budapest, told Telex that broadcasting such videos could be interpreted as a violation of international law, because making and broadcasting such videos violates the Geneva Convention, which regulates the legal status of prisoners of war, their treatment, and the manner of their detention.
Szijjártó also said that he had received assurances that Russia would continue to supply crude oil and natural gas to Hungary at unchanged prices despite the international energy crisis caused by the war in Iran, which is important for energy security and the reduction of utility costs. He also mentioned the Friendship oil pipeline, on which, according to him, Ukraine has been blocking oil deliveries to Hungary for weeks "solely for political reasons". What he failed to mention was that deliveries had been halted due to a Russian attack on the pipeline.
For more quick, accurate and impartial news from and about Hungary, subscribe to the Telex English newsletter!