PM Orbán-close historian, ideologist, House of Terror head says Ukrainians massacred Ukrainians in Bucha

Mária Schmidt is one of the wealthiest and most influential women in Hungary; she even dared to scheme against Viktor Orbán’s leadership in Fidesz after the 2006 election defeat. Later, Orbán forgave her, and today Schmidt is a leading ideologist of Fidesz and director of multiple institutions, including the House of Terror in Budapest. The historian shared an essay on her blog, frequently referring to Wikipedia, in which she suggested that the Ukrainian military committed the Bucha massacres in April 2022. Public outrage followed, but a Russia expert says the essay is just a diversion.

Schmidt refers to testimonies and interviews concerning the Bucha massacres and suggests the horrific deed was not committed by the withdrawing Russian military but by Ukrainians conquering the village near Kyiv. The reason was to break the armistice and peace talks and win support for the Ukrainian resistance, according to Schmidt. You may read the full essay HERE in Hungarian.

• The Hungarian Bucsa village mourns their massacred brothers of Ukrainian Bucha! – read our article HERE

The essay caused outrage in the Hungarian public life and media, even though it followed a government-close Magyar Nemzet opinion article on the issue and with the same conclusions. Tamás Pilhál, one of the paper’s columnists, wrote then that Bucha was a “false flag play.” Schmidt writes in the final sentence of her paper that “we are thirsty for the truth” [about Bucha – DNH].

A Hungarian Russia-expert, András Rácz, wrote that “the likely purpose of today’s particularly stupid (…) Schmidt article on Bucha is to divert attention from the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna’s meetings in Budapest. It is a classic “red herring” information operation, nothing more.”

Rácz believes that the Hungarian government (campaigning against Ukraine’s EU accession by launching a referendum) did not want the papers to write about today’s calm and constructive talks between Deputy FM Levente Magyar and Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna. Rácz suggested that it could be no coincidence considering how the “Orbán-regime” operates in such situations.

• PM Orbán: Ukraine not sovereign, cannot join the EU – read more HERE

He wrote that the action aimed “to influence the domestic discourse in the short term, in line with the ongoing government campaign against Ukraine. Mária Schmidt, a former Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Soros Foundation scholarship holder (she received a three-year research scholarship in 1985 from a joint programme of the Academy and the Soros Foundation), had no problem lending her name to this as well.”

Mária Schmidt is Director-General of the 20th Century Institute, the 21st Century Institute and the House of Terror Museum. She is also a lecturer at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University.

Levente Magyar: There is hope that the Hungarian position on Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration will be fundamentally reshaped

Levente Magyar, the parliamentary state secretary of the foreign ministry, on Tuesday said he sensed a “new kind of dynamism and mentality” in Hungarian-Ukrainian relations, which would provide a basis for Ukraine to offer an “acceptable solution” when it comes to the ethnic Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia “in the coming weeks and months”.

“I see hope for reaching an agreement in the foreseeable future, which could also fundamentally reshape the Hungarian position on Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration,” Magyar told a joint press conference with Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister responsible for European integration, in Budapest.

Magyar noted that Hungarian-Ukrainian ties have been strained by the legal situation of Transcarpathian Hungarians since the mid-2010s. So far, he said, there has been no solution that could fully settle the issues around ethnic Hungarians’ right to the use of their mother tongue in education, community life and public administration.