Putin: region Hungarians live in is old Russian land
“Russia engaged in a battle for its historic borders”, President Vladimir Putin told tens of thousands of his people at a grandiose patriotic concert in Moscow yesterday. However, those borders changed in the last few centuries. The question is what now Moscow regards its historic border. But the answer might sound terrifying to most Hungarian ears.
Russia does not know its borders
Attila Demkó, a well-known Hungarian author, security policy expert and former diplomat, said that even the Russians cannot tell which their historic borders are. That is because the Moscow-centered state never found its natural geographic boundaries. That resulted in catastrophes sometimes for the Russians and many times for the neighbouring peoples. That is why Hungary was forced to become part of the Soviet Union-led Eastern, Communist block for 45 years after WWII.
And that is true for Russia’s western borders and for its outskirts in the Caucasus, Far East and Kazakhstan.
Gellért Rajcsányi, a Hungarian journalist, therefore, argues that Russia’s borders are where Moscow wants them to be. And that is bad news for the Hungarians if we believe what Putin said and wrote.
Putin thinks Transcarpathia must be Russian
In 2021, the Russian President shared a paper about “the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. Among others, he clears that Transcarpathia, where more than 150,000 Hungarians live, is an old Russian land. He wrote that, in the 18th century, when Russia, Prussia and Austria partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Moscow regained “the western Old Russian lands, except for Galicia and Transcarpathia, which became part of the Austrian – and later Austro-Hungarian – Empire”.
Furthermore, after the Soviet troops “liberated” Transcarpathia in WWII, the “congress of the Orthodox population of the region voted for the inclusion of Carpathian Ruthenia in the RSFSR or, as a separate Carpathian republic, in the USSR proper”. Yet the Soviet leaders ignored the people’s choice, so Transcarpathia became part of Ukraine, Putin believes.
And it is not only him. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote today on his Telegram channel that Russia must achieve all the goals of its “special military operation” in Ukraine. “Push the borders of threats to our country as far as possible, even if these are the borders of Poland”, The Guardian translated his last sentence to English. That would mean consuming all Ukraine, including Transcarpathia and tens of thousands of local Hungarians.
He also wrote that Russia would return to its territories and protect its people, suffering from genocide and shelling. Medvedev highlighted that the fate of Ukraine would be made “across the ocean”. He refers to Washington and the United States, who supply the weapons and money to Kyiv to help Ukrainians defend their homeland.
Interestingly, that is what the Hungarian government says. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó urged American-Russian peace talks after meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday.
Source: mandiner.hu