Reports that thousands of ethnic Hungarians are crossing over to Hungary from Transcarpathia in Ukraine are false, MFA State Secretary Zsolt Németh declared on public television on Monday morning. However, it is true that a few hundred young Hungarians have set off from Vynohradiv (Nagyszőlős) due to a false rumor that the Ukrainian army began military mobilisation, he added.

Zsolt Németh pointed out that was no general mobilisation in Ukraine, only the government had put its army on stand-by, therefore Hungarians with Ukrainian citizenship need not be concerned about being drafted to the army.

The operative staff in Budapest has been set up to coordinate Hungarian measures concerning the Ukrainian conflict and has made preparations for every eventuality including the arrival of a large number of refugees, the

State Secretary of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry stated. Zsolt Németh refuted the claims made by the opposition that the Hungarian government had failed to state a position concerning the Russian intervention in Ukraine, noting that Foreign Minister János Martonyi had repeatedly stated that Russia's move into the Crimean Peninsula was a clear violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty.

The Hungarian State Secretary stressed that the most important was to work out an international mechanism based on which the crisis in Ukraine could be handled and a dialogue could be started between Ukraine and Russia. He said that in addition to the leading great powers and the EU, international organisations such as the UN, the OSCE and the Council of Europe must be included in that process. The Budapest Memorandum signed by the United States, Britain, Russia and Ukraine in 1994, which guarantees Ukraine's territorial unity, could also serve as a framework for addressing the issue of the current crisis in Ukraine, he added.

Zsolt Németh regarded it a major accomplishment that violence had been subdued thanks to the involvement of the European Union in the crisis, and he underlined that clear diplomatic signals must be sent to Russia in the future as well.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)