“It is a lie that the Ukrainian state has nothing to do with the website that is listing suspected dual Ukrainian-Hungarian nationals”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Kossuth Radio’s “Good Morning, Hungary!” show on Thursday morning.

The Minister was asked with relation to the Mirotrovec (Peacemaker) extremist Ukrainian website, which has published a list including the personal data of three hundred Transcarpathian Hungarian state or local government officials, who the website claims are dual nationals. The Minister explained that the list includes personal data that is not available from public sources, but exclusively from secret service or government sources.

“In addition, one of the directors of the NGO that operated the extremist website used to work for the Ukrainian secret service”, the Minister added, pointing out that the man who launched the movement that runs the website is currently still employed by the Ukrainian government. According to Mr. Szijjártó, it is therefore a lie that the Ukrainian state has nothing to do with the website.

“It is the duty of the Ukrainian state to protect its own citizens, but it is clearly not doing so”, he added. According to the Minister, “so far it has not lifted a finger” to ensure that the personal data of Hungarians living in Ukraine, including Hungarian citizens, are removed from the website.

Mr. Szijjártó also spoke about the fact that what is happening in Ukraine is “to all intents and purposes a hate campaign against the members of the Hungarian national community that is being run with state support and state encouragement”. He said that in his opinion the current President, Petro Poroshenko, who will be running for office again at the spring elections, gave his consent to the hate campaign in an attempt to increase his popularity.

The Minister was also a guest on Hungarian M1 television’s Thursday morning current affairs program, where he highlighted the fact that Ukraine is continuously going against the most fundamental norms and interests and is violating its international commitments, but Hungary will continue to take action against this on every possible international forum.

(MTI)