The Ukrainian border is three hours’ drive from Budapest. Berehove, an anchor point for the Hungarian community, is just across the border established in 1920 under the Treaty of Trianon, which determined the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Visitors don’t need to switch to Kyiv time as this southwestern corner of Ukraine, over 800km from the capital, runs on what locals call ‘Western’ or ‘Budapest’ time.

Like many Hungarian cities, Berehove (population, 25,000) has a Heroes’ Square in its centre, but the heroes commemorated here are Ukrainian. A memorial displays the faces of the hundred people who died in the Maidan revolution ten years ago. And the names of the 20 soldiers from the town who have been killed since February 2022 at the front, nearly a thousand kilometres east of here, have been added to the obelisk listing those who died in the second world war.

Berehove’s mayor, Zoltán Babják – who calls himself ‘a Hungarian, and a Ukrainian patriot’ – flies the now commonplace red and black flag once the symbol of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) alongside the Ukrainian flag. In the second world war, this armed, radical wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) led by Stepan Bandera – a virulent nationalist and antisemite – was at times an opponent and at times an ally of the Nazis in their fight against the Soviets and carried out numerous massacres of Jewish and Polish civilians.

Ukraine’s Hungarian minority finds itself caught in the middle of Budapest and Kyiv’s difficult relationship, which has deteriorated in the past decade. First, due to the mass granting of Hungarian passports to ethnic Hungarians since 2012, though Ukraine prohibits dual citizenship. And second, over the Ukrainian parliament introducing laws that restrict Hungarian-language teaching in schools in 2017. Resentment has only grown with the war, Budapest’s refusal to sever its close ties with Moscow and its attempts to block EU aid for Kyiv.

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