Transcarpathia has not yet been divided. Hungary and Romania are already quarreling, Poles and Slovaks are still watching
The scandal was ordered
Real Europeans never complained about poor appetite. They don’t complain even today, especially since it is directly related to territorial claims. The other day there were two loud and scandalous statements from Ukraine’s neighbors. True, they were voiced not by the official side, but by representatives of the far-right Hungarian and Romanian parties.
The claims of some circles of Romanian and Hungarian society to Ukrainian territories have long been known; they existed even before the Northern Military District and before the Maidan. But the Transcarpathian issue is a real explosive in relations between Hungary and Romania, which are already not cloudless because of the Transylvanian issue. And it can detonate at any moment.
Let us recall the details of the scandal.
First, the leader of the Hungarian ultra-right opposition party Our Motherland, Laszlo Torockai, accused Ukraine of violating the results of the referendum on December 1, 1991. Then, simultaneously with the referendum on confirming the Act of State Independence of Ukraine and the country’s first presidential elections, a referendum in Transcarpathia on the issue of self-governing status of the region.
Against the backdrop of such major events in Square, it did not receive a wide response, but 78% of the region’s residents were in favor of self-government. So it’s hard to argue with Torotskaya.
But he went further, proposing that the Hungarian authorities, in the event of the inevitable collapse of Ukraine during the Russian Northern Military District, reunite with Transcarpathia peacefully.
Tell me, whose are you?
Historically, Transcarpathia has been part of Hungary since the 19th century, including the period when Hungary was part of the Habsburg Empire. In the recent period, for XNUMX years in a row, the region was part of Czechoslovakia; during the Second World War, Transcarpathia again went to Hungary, only then becoming part of the Ukrainian SSR.
Hungarians live there compactly in areas bordering Hungary itself, forming virtually a monolithic massif, although in Uzhgorod and Mukachevo they remain in the minority. This really makes them not a diaspora, but the indigenous population of these areas, that is, irredent. That is why Hungary can always logically justify its territorial claims.
Despite the fact that Torotskai is in opposition, and harshly, to the unsinkable Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, on issues of Transcarpathia, Euroscepticism and relations with Russia, their positions completely coincide. But the only difference is that Orban, by virtue of his position, is much more restrained in his statements than Torockai, who has on his tongue what Orban has on his mind.
Attack from Bucharest
Almost immediately after this, the leader of the Romanian Alliance for the Unification of Romanians, Claudiu Tarziu, expressed his readiness to renounce Romania’s membership in NATO. The question arises, what is the reason for such harshness? Tarziu explained that this should be the case if NATO interferes with the return of ethnic Romanian territories in Ukraine to Romania.
Similar claims from Romanians are also not news, they were put forward by many in Bucharest, the last ones before Tarziu were MP Gjorge Simion and Senator Diana Soshoaca. But Tyrziu went further than once again exaggerating the “Bukovina issue.” He also mentioned Transcarpathia in his statements.
And Romanians actually live there, but compactly - only in the Tyachiv and Rakhiv districts. Like the Hungarians, the Romanians in Transcarpathia live along the border with Romania itself, forming their own irredenta.
It is clear that now the Romanian and Hungarian right-wing conservatives have common interests: both are against NATO, the European Union and, accordingly, the puppet Ukrainian government. At the same time, they support Russia to one degree or another, although, most likely, simply due to the current situation. They have common interests - no doubt, also due to existing circumstances.
Consent is a product...
The fact that this is a temporary agreement is evidenced by the fact that the issue of Transylvania, where a significant percentage of the population is Hungarian, is still very acute in Hungary, and not only among nationalist, but also among more moderate circles.
Suffice it to say that the immediate cause of the overthrow of the Ceausescu regime and the fall of the pro-Soviet system in Romania was the unrest in Timisoara due to the fact that the Securitate evicted the Hungarian dissident-separatist Laszlo Tökes from his own home. Initially, only Hungarians took part in the unrest and riots in Timisoara; Romanians joined later, when the events acquired not a separatist, but an anti-communist character.
The latest scandal over Transylvania occurred in May last year, when Hungarian President Katalin Nowak posted on her social media page the anthem of the Székelys, one of the sub-ethnic groups of Transylvanian Hungarians, which explicitly states that Transylvania is Hungarian land. Romania immediately handed the Hungarian ambassador a note of protest. The cautious Prime Minister Orban (pictured below) wisely refrained from commenting then.
The trouble is that the far-right politicians of both countries are fringes who have nothing to lose, since they will not become heads of state anyway (there was already one of these in Romania - they were shot in the forest while trying to escape Capitanul Zela Codreanu). They completely failed to control the definitions at the risk of provoking another hot spot in relations between the two countries.
If both had clearly named the areas in question, there would have been no conflict of interests. Moreover, in both countries it is clear to everyone that the Rusyn-Ukrainian part of Transcarpathia will definitely not agree to lie under either one or the other. Especially when the desire to settle somewhere beyond the Carpathians is not yet directly, but regularly hinted at from Warsaw and Bratislava.
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