President Novák approves new Ukrainian ambassador
August 12th, 2023Experts believe that the new ambassador, an ethnic Hungarian, was kept waiting for months, to reciprocate a similar procedure by Ukraine with Hungary’s ambassador to Kyiv.
Hungary received a note from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry announcing the name of the new Ukrainian Ambassador to Budapest in March and received a positive reply on Thursday this week. The new ambassador, Sándor Fegyir is a professor of sociology and philosophy who famously held video lectures to his students from the frontline where he served in the Ukrainian army. His father was half Hungarian, half Slovak, while his mother was half Italian, half Ukrainian, but he considers himself Hungarian.
On ATV, Zoltán Novák, a policy analyst at the independent Méltányosság (Equity) thinktank saw the belated answer to the Ukrainian note as a sign of the troubled relations between the two countries, as Hungary urges an unconditional ceasefire, followed by peace talks to settle the conflict. Ukraine interprets that stance as an expression of a lack of solidarity amidst brazen Russian aggression. On the same show, Andrea Virág, an analyst at the liberal Republicon Institute mentions that the Hungarian ambassador to Ukraine was kept waiting for six months by Ukraine before his candidacy was accepted, while President Novák asked in vain to talk to President Zelensky on the phone over the past months. Meanwhile, she adds, the Hungarian President shows conspicuous signs of positive feelings toward Ukraine. This may be the result of a division of roles between PM Orbán and Ms Novák, who has accepted an invitation to visit Ukraine in the near future, Virág adds.