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Transcript/Script((PLAYBOOK SLUG: Ukraine Hungary Minority (TV)
HEADLINE: In Ukraine’s Ethnic Hungarian Villages, Politics and War Drive Depopulation
TEASER: Many ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine have applied for Hungarian passports to escape war and military draft
PUBLISHED AT: 2/28/24 at 8:40am
BYLINE: Henry Ridgwell
CONTRIBUTOR:
DATELINE: Verbovets, Ukraine
VIDEOGRAPHER: Ancsin Gabor
VIDEO EDITOR:
SCRIPT EDITORS: DLJ, Reifenrath
VIDEO SOURCES: VOA, APTN
PLATFORMS: WEB _X_ TV _X_ RADIO __
TRT: 3:17
VID APPROVED BY: MAS
TYPE: TVPKG
EDITOR NOTES:))
((INTRO))
[[The Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia is home to around 75-thousand ethnic Hungarians - but many have fled to Hungary and other parts of Europe to escape the war with Russia and the military draft in Ukraine after Budapest made it easier for them to obtain a Hungarian passport. As Henry Ridgwell reports, these ethnic Hungarians have found themselves caught in a political dispute between Kyiv and Budapest.]]
((NARRATOR))
Verbovets lies a few kilometers from the Hungarian border – one of the few regions of Ukraine that has avoided Russian missiles.
Like most villages in the Zakarpattia region, Verbovets is eerily quiet. Houses are boarded up, the gardens overgrown. Many of its people — mostly ethnic Hungarians — are gone.
((Henry Ridgwell, VOA News)) // ((NARRATOR))
“It’s now much easier for ethnic Hungarians living here in Ukraine to get a Hungarian passport. And locals say many people – especially men of fighting age – have fled across the border to escape the war and the military draft.”
((NARRATOR))
The Zakarpattia region was once part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Many people here still speak Hungarian.
With most of the men gone, the women, the children and the older adults are left behind. Every day, Natalia Sipos leaves her home in Verbovets and crosses the border into Hungary to work in a battery factory.
((FOR RADIO: She says that since the war began, life has been hard. Many families left, and there are not many places to work… For ethnic Hungarians in Zakarpattia, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is good, she says. He gave them jobs. Hungary is very different.”))
((Natalia Sipos, Verbovets Resident (female, in Hungarian) ))
“Since the war began, life is hard. Many families left here, and there are not many places to work… For ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia, [Hungarian Prime Minister] Viktor Orban is good — he gave us jobs. Hungary is very different.”
((NARRATOR))
In 2017, Kyiv passed a law making the Ukrainian language compulsory in most aspects of public life. Ethnic Hungarians complained of discrimination.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban took up their cause – citing it as one reason for blocking Ukraine’s accession talks with the European Union. The EU persuaded Orban to leave the room when they voted to begin talks with Kyiv in December.
Ukraine has since amended the law – and Hungarian schools in Zakarpattia can teach in their own language. Some locals, however, feel they are being used as pawns in a political game.
((FOR RADIO: Milan Constantinovits, Deputy Director-General for Professional Affairs at at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in the town of Berehove – which teaches in Hungarian – says, “Very often, the ethnic tensions that enter this multi-ethnic space come from outside. The people who live side by side here, the natives of this area, basically have no problems with each other. Many times this is an artificially generated flaring of tensions.”))
((Milan Constantinovits, Mathias Corvinus Collegium Hungarian School (male, in Hungarian) ))
“Very often, the ethnic tensions that enter this multi-ethnic space come from outside. The people who live side by side here, the natives of this area, basically have no problems with each other. Many times this is an artificially generated flaring of tensions.”
((NARRATOR))
But many locals say poverty is the biggest problem – not politics. Some are even nostalgic for Communist days, like Marika, an 81-year-old Verbovets resident who did not provide her last name.
((FOR RADIO: She says, quote, "The whole village has left. There is nothing to do here, and the people would die here starving if they didn’t leave. There is no work. When we had the farm collective, we could live here on the few kopek [coins] we got.”))
((Marika, Verbovets Resident (female, in Hungarian) ))
“The whole village has left. There is nothing to do here, and they would die here starving (if they didn’t leave), there is no work. When we had the farm collective, we could live here on the few kopek [coins] we got.”
Verbovets is far from the front lines. But the war has emptied these border villages – and made difficult lives even harder for those who remain.
((Henry Ridgwell, VOA News, Verbovets, Ukraine.))
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