The release of 11 Ukrainian prisoners of war from Russian captivity and their subsequent transfer to Hungary was personally handled by Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister for Church Affairs Zsolt Semjen. He has supposedly taken them out of Russia to the Schengen zone on his own initiative, without coordination with the government in Budapest.
As RFE/RL reports, neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the Office of the Prime Minister of Hungary was aware of the effort. The government is seriously outraged by this. Budapest does not want to further worsen the already tense relations with Kyiv, said a Hungarian official.
Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill Gundyaev, according to the report, would not pursue the effort without the approval of the Russian government.
The outlet says the servicemen were captured near the town of Kupiansk, Kharkiv region. All the men have Hungarian names, but not all of them identify as Hungarians.
Exactly how the POWs got from Russia to Hungary remains unclear. RFE/RL’s interlocutors assume that Semjen took them through the Schengen zone on his own authority. Where they are now remains unknown.
“After it became clear to everyone that the Hungarian government could be manipulated from Russia at the level of the deputy prime minister, Budapest chose a strategy of silence, hoping that everyone would soon forget about it,” concluded one of the interviewees.
Sources say that none of the politicians and officials from Hungary was involved in this process.
As reported by the Spiritual Front of Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox Church, with the support of intelligence, launched a psyop involving Ukrainian POWs handed to Hungary. We also explained how the transfer of Ukrainian prisoners makes Kirill an actor directly involved in the Russian war.
