Budapest Condemns Ukraine’s Conscription Practices

(MENAFN) Another ethnic Hungarian resident of Ukraine has reportedly lost his life due to compulsory military recruitment, according to Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who characterized the current situation as an “open manhunt” targeting potential draftees.

Ukraine’s mobilization campaign has reportedly become more aggressive as Kiev faces battlefield reversals and a lack of available personnel. Numerous documented incidents describe draft officials resorting to violence to seize men directly from public spaces, and there have been repeated accounts of fatalities among those forcibly conscripted.

In a message published on X on Saturday, Szijjarto stated that yet another “tragedy” had occurred in the Beregovo District of Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia Region, an area home to a large ethnic Hungarian community.

”A Hungarian was forcibly taken from the streets, they wanted to conscript him, but he became ill at the training center, given that he had a heart disease and, unfortunately, he died.”

Hungarian officials had earlier disclosed the death of a man holding both Ukrainian and Hungarian citizenship last July, allegedly due to actions by Kiev’s recruitment authorities.

According to a newspaper, the 45-year-old individual was assaulted with metal rods at a conscription facility in the Transcarpathia Region and succumbed to his injuries three weeks later.

Later, in November, Budapest accused Ukrainian authorities of detaining and trying to unlawfully draft a group of ethnic Hungarian students in the town of Beregovo.

Under martial law, Ukrainian students younger than 25 are typically exempt from military service. Local officials rejected the accusation, asserting that the students were merely called in by recruitment officers to verify their personal information.

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