BUDAPEST — Hungary will let Ukrainian grain cross its territory on the way to Western Europe, Prime Minister Péter Magyar has said, yet he does not expect the leader who asked for the favour to come to Budapest next week.
Magyar, who signed off on Ukraine’s first EU accession cluster in June, told the Hungarian television channel RTL in an interview published Saturday that “if it just passes through the country, then obviously there is no obstacle to it.” A well-established transit procedure existed three to four years ago, he said, before it was discontinued.
Volodymyr Zelensky made the request at the European Council summit in Brussels on Friday. He told EU leaders that shipments across the Black Sea were currently impossible because of Russian attacks and asked Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Hungary to let cargo through, then told Magyar in their first one-on-one meeting that sealed rail cars would be a great help. The closure of Odesa’s ports, which TEH has tracked since July, explains the urgency, though none of the reports read for this story says how much grain is waiting.
The offer is narrow by design. Magyar framed it as transit only, and the Orbán government that preceded him declared a state of emergency and banned Ukrainian agricultural products, the Kyiv Independent reported. Poland, meanwhile, is blocking one part of Ukraine’s EU membership talks over concerns about its farmers.
The symbolism is moving the other way. Zelensky has been invited to Budapest on October 23 for ceremonies marking 70 years since the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and his deputy chief of staff, Ihor Zhovkva, confirmed the invitation and added, “We shall see.” In an interview with the news site 444.hu published Saturday, Magyar said a visit looked unlikely. He floated two alternatives: that he travel to Kyiv and go on with Zelensky to Beregszász, or that Zelensky come to Budapest and continue from there. More than 100 politicians are invited, Euronews reported; Vladimir Putin is not among them.
The thaw rests on minority rights. Zelensky signed a law this week on the educational rights of Ukraine’s national minorities, a step Hungary had demanded, and Magyar called it “a first step towards rebuilding mutual trust.” Budapest had tied Kyiv’s EU path to the long dispute over Transcarpathian minority rights.
In the reporting reviewed for this story, nobody says who will check the seals, or how Budapest will show that transit grain never reaches a Hungarian market.
