Uzhhorod, Ukraine – The Zakarpattia region, known for its ski resorts and undulating landscapes, has in recent years become an unlikely focal point of a diplomatic dispute between Budapest and Kyiv.

Home to more than 100,000 ethnic Hungarians, Zakarpattia has a complex history of shifting borders and empires, having passed through Austro-Hungarian, Czechoslovak and Soviet rule before becoming part of independent Ukraine.

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Located in the country’s southwest, the region’s administrative centre Uzhhorod has been largely unscathed from Russian attacks.

The area borders Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, and is viewed by Kyiv as a stable and strategically vital borderland.

Budapest, however, argues that the Hungarian minority’s language and education rights are under threat. The long-running disagreement has been a recurring obstacle to Ukraine’s EU relations during wartime.

A dispute shaped by law, politics and war

Hungary’s objections were initially anchored in genuine minority-rights concerns, particularly between 2014 and 2019, as Ukraine moved to strengthen the use of Ukrainian as the state language following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Dr Krisztina Lajosi-Moore, a senior lecturer and research coordinator in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, told Al Jazeera.

She said that tensions grew in 2017, when Kyiv passed an education law making Ukrainian the main language of instruction after primary school, significantly reducing the role of minority languages – including Hungarian – and prompting protests from Budapest and criticism from the Venice Commission, an advisory body of the Council of Europe.

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From a minority-rights perspective, Lajosi-Moore said the laws created both “tangible and symbolic anxieties”, particularly in education, and that Kyiv was slow to recognise how deeply these concerns were felt.

While Ukrainian authorities defended the reforms as essential for state cohesion and protection against Russian influence, the impact on minorities was underestimated.

Ukraine’s 2019 state language law and amendments adopted in 2023 during EU accession talks have failed to resolve the dispute, with Hungary arguing that minority-language education remains restricted beyond the primary level.

However, since 2022, Lajosi-Moore said, the issue has become increasingly politicised, with minority rights turned into “a tool within wider domestic and foreign policy strategies related to Ukraine.”

Rather than pursuing agreements or diplomatic means, Budapest increasingly used the issue as a veto over Ukraine’s EU path, she said, while its leader Viktor Orban used the Russia-Ukraine war for domestic politics, which helped “foster fear and resentment”.

Political tensions and everyday reality

Kornelia, a 17-year-old student of Hungarian ethnicity, seamlessly switched between Ukrainian and Hungarian as she served tables at a traditional restaurant in Uzhhorod.

“I have friends in Hungary and friends in Ukraine; it has never been an issue for me,” she said.

Hungarian-language instruction is fully permitted in preschool and primary school in Zakarpattia.

From lower secondary school onward, with children aged between 11 and 17, Ukrainian becomes the main language of instruction. Hungarian is taught as a subject and, in some cases, used for a limited number of classes or subjects.

Kornelia said that using more Ukrainian at school had made it her dominant language, but only by a small margin – something she said she could easily address with practice.

Sofia, a 15-year-old student from Uzhhorod of Ukrainian heritage who knows only a few Hungarian phrases, said political tensions are not reflected on the ground.

“I have friends who speak with each other all the time in Hungarian – the idea that we would have a problem with it simply is not true,” she said.

Yulia, a 20-year-old assistant in a bookshop, described life in Uzhhorod – the region’s largest city and capital, which is shielded by the Carpathian mountains and close to several NATO states – as “multicultural and warm, where everyone lives in peace”.

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She said since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, locals, rather than squabbling over small differences, have focused on dealing with the influx of people now visiting the area due to its relative safety, compared with the rest of Ukraine.

Lajosi-Moore said Budapest has “increasingly chosen escalation” over mediation – a strategy she argued does not serve the interests of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine.

She added that this approach aligns with Orban’s support for nationalist and far-right politicians elsewhere in the region, including George Simion in Romania and Robert Fico in Slovakia, both of whom are associated with contentious debates over nationalism, minority rights and democratic standards.

If Budapest genuinely cared about minority rights,” Lajosi-Moore said, it would rely on European Union minority-protection mechanisms, preserve stable relations with neighbouring states, and consistently foreground human and minority rights – rather than allowing the issue to become entangled in wartime geopolitics.

Budapest could soften its stance, she said, if it were able to show domestic audiences concrete progress – framing it as: “We secured safeguards, now we support the next step.”

She added that in this scenario, Kyiv would be required to deliver “tangible, measurable results” on minority protections.