War in Ukraine: Hungarian Minority Pushed to the Edge

A Hungarian school in western Ukraine. Financial support from Budapest is vital for this community in the west of the country. Credit: Zanko Barnabas/IPSby Karlos Zurutuza (uzhgorod, ukraine)Thursday, September 17, 2026Inter Press Service UZHGOROD, Ukraine, September 17 (IPS) - It happened in 1920. At the Grand Trianon Palace at Versailles, the Allies drew a new map of Hungary that sliced away two-thirds of its territory. Such a cartographic mutilation went down in history as the Treaty of Trianon. No country lost more territory after the First World War. Overnight, more than three million Hungarians woke up on the wrong side of Hungary’s new border. Their descendants are now scattered across Slovakia, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine.People like Rita Simon, a 31-year-old history graduate who works for Karpaty Igaz Szo, “The Honest Voice of the Carpathians.” Ukraine’s oldest newspaper turns out to be a Hungarian daily based in Uzhgorod, 800 kilometres southwest of Kyiv.It is as old as the treaty that, for Hungarians, remains a byword for humiliation. Simon points to a framed front page from 1920 on the wall. “The presses only stopped during the Second World War. We have never missed an ...