Zelensky invited to Budapest for commemoration on 70th anniversary of Hungary's 1956 revolution

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may visit Budapest next week if he accepts the invitation to attend the commemoration organized to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Ihor Zhovkva, the Ukrainian president’s deputy chief of staff, mentioned the invitation in an interview with Euronews when asked whether Zelensky had been invited to the Hungarian capital.

“The president of Ukraine has received an invitation to attend. We shall see,” Zhovkva added.

The invitation came even before Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar and Zelensky began their bilateral talks on Friday, which had been in the works for months.

“We are very optimistic,” Zhovkva told Euronews, noting that Kyiv sees the meeting as an opportunity to turn the recent diplomatic opening into concrete progress between the two neighbouring countries.

Hungarian-Ukrainian relations have been extremely strained in recent years under the Orbán government. This was in part due to the rights of ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia, specifically, their right to education in their native language. The Orbán government repeatedly obstructed Ukraine's EU accession process on account of this issue.

Shortly after taking office, the Magyar government’s Foreign Minister, Anita Orbán said that restoring the relationship with Ukraine was one of their priorities in relation to foreign policy. A bilateral working group comprised of experts, political organizations of the Hungarian community in Transcarpathia and representatives of the churches was established, and after weeks of negotiations, PM Péter Magyar announced in June that a comprehensive agreement on the expansion of the linguistic, educational, cultural, and political rights of the Hungarian minority had been reached with Ukraine.

This Monday, the Ukrainian parliament finally approved the bill on the educational rights of national minorities, which guarantees Hungarian-language education and legal protection for minority schools. This paved the way for the Hungarian government to issue the letter required to open negotiations on two groups of accession chapters for Ukraine. We covered this historic law and why it could pave the way for restoring the relationship between the two countries in more detail here.