Three Ukrainian citizens banned from entering Hungary and Schengen Area

Three Ukrainian citizens are being banned from entering Hungary and the entire Schengen Area – Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister's Office announced at Thursday’s government briefing in Budapest.

According to Gulyás, the three individuals are retired secret service Major General and former Ukrainian MP Hryhoriy Omelchenko, Ukrainian political analyst Boris Tisenhausen, and Yevhen Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi group C14.

Who are they?

One of Omelchenko’s statements was reported by the Hungarian pro-government press as a personal threat against Viktor Orbán and his family. Omelchenko, who served in the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) more than 30 years ago, is best known in Ukraine for his anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and his penchant for self-aggrandizement. However, it is not true that he threatened Viktor Orbán’s children and grandchildren. To make his words sound like a threat, the pro-government media had to cut his sentence off at just the right place in the version they circulated.

At one point in the interview, he said, “Orbán should think about his five children and six grandchildren.” The train of thought continued here, but the pro-government press simply cut the recording off at this point.

“Doesn’t the blood of Ukrainian children matter? Is Russian oil more valuable to him than the lives of Ukrainian children?” – Omelchenko asked, before going on to say that “the blood and tears of Ukrainian children” are also weighing on Orbán’s conscience, because Russia partially finances its war machine through the sale of Russian crude oil and natural gas. Our more detailed portrait of the retired Ukrainian officer may be found here.

According to his biography, Boris Tisenhausen was born in Sevastopol and worked as an advisor to the Ukrainian presidential office between 2014 and 2019. However, he lost his position following the election defeat of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. He currently works as a political analyst, and his YouTube channel has half a million followers.

As for Yevhen Karas, Gulyás said that he leads the neo-Nazi group C14. The extremist organization most recently made headlines in Hungary in 2018, when masked assailants attacked a temporary settlement of Roma from Transcarpathia on the outskirts of Lviv with knives and baseball bats. C14, along with a paramilitary organization, claimed responsibility for the attack. Radio Free Europe also described the organization as one whose members openly expressed their extremist views. This is counterbalanced by the fact that in 2019, a court in Kyiv ruled in favor of C14 in a defamation lawsuit filed against the Ukrainian TV channel Hromadske, after the channel referred to the organization as a neo-Nazi group in a tweet.

According to his foundation’s website, Karas is a Ukrainian military officer and commander of the 413th Drone Regiment, who also helped establish a foundation that delivers various supplies to the front lines. The Foundation for the Defense of the Future receives orders from the Ukrainian army; as they write, they purchase vehicles, drones, radios, first-aid kits, helmets, and ammunition, which they then transport to the front lines. The foundation’s website states that Karas was an active participant in the 2014 Maidan Revolution.

Ukraine has not yet responded to the news of the bans. We contacted the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their reaction to the Hungarian government’s decision. We will report on it as soon as they respond.

The situation was already tense

Gulyás’s announcement further exacerbates the already tense relations between Hungary and Ukraine. The situation really escalated when, at the end of January, oil shipments through the Friendship pipeline running through Ukraine were halted after it was damaged by a Russian bombing. Additionally, it seems quite likely that the Ukrainian side is not particularly eager to repair it.

Following this, Péter Szijjártó announced that until the Ukrainians repair the pipeline, Hungary will block the €90 billion loan that EU leaders have already approved for Ukraine. The Hungarian Prime Minister has consistently stayed out of the European Council’s conclusions on Ukraine for over a year, but last December the 27 member states unanimously declared: Ukraine will receive a 90-billion-euro loan. This will be provided by 24 member states through a method tailored to smaller groups and enhanced cooperation, and will not impose a financial burden on the others—Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. There was a good reason why all member states had to agree to this politically at the time: the loan is guaranteed by the flexibility of the common budget, and the budget can only be amended unanimously, so one of the three legislative acts implementing the agreement requires everyone’s consent.

Orbán subsequently told a group of business leaders, “We will win, and we will win by force; there will be no compromise—we will break the oil blockade. We will employ force to make the Ukrainians resume oil shipments. They must open the Friendship pipeline unconditionally and without delay.”

To this, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy responded by saying: “We hope that a certain individual in the EU will not block the 90 billion or its first installment, and that Ukrainian soldiers will receive the weapons they need. Otherwise, we’ll give this person’s address to the armed forces—they’ll call him and speak to him in their own language.”

The already tense Hungarian-Ukrainian relationship deteriorated further after the detention of the staff of a Ukrainian bank's cash transport . According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, the Hungarian authorities “effectively took hostage” employees of the Ukrainian State Savings Bank. The detained individuals have since been released, but the Hungarian government has adopted legislation stipulating that the purpose of the assets seized from the Ukrainian money transporters must be determined. In response, the legal representative of the Ukrainian bank filed a complaint with the Hungarian Central Investigative Prosecutor’s Office on suspicion of abuse of office and acts of terrorism.