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Russia’s latest release of two prisoners appears intended as a “gesture of goodwill” toward Hungary.
According to Russian media reports on March 4, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin decided to release a Ukrainian prisoner of war who is described as an ethnic Hungarian previously mobilized into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, who traveled to Moscow for talks on energy supplies, is expected to take the prisoner back with him.
Ahead of Szijjártó’s visit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held a phone call with Putin, during which the issue of two prisoners was discussed. Putin said he had decided to release them and that they could leave Moscow on the same plane used by the Hungarian delegation.
One of the prisoners mentioned is Albert Roman, who reportedly served in Ukraine’s 14th Brigade and was captured by Russian forces near Pokrovsk not long after being mobilized. While in captivity, he was allowed to record an appeal to Orbán asking for help in securing his release.
In an interview with Russian media, Roman claimed he had been living in Hungary since 2020 and described Ukrainian citizenship as unnecessary for him, although he continued to use it to cross the Ukrainian-Hungarian border. He was reportedly detained by Ukrainian border guards as a man of conscription age. After the interview spread online, residents of a village in Zakarpattia’s Tyachiv district said they might recognize him.
Around 80,000–90,000 ethnic Hungarians currently live in Ukraine, most of them in the Zakarpattia region, which historically spent long periods under Hungarian and Austro-Hungarian rule. Since 2010, Hungary has simplified the process of granting citizenship and has actively issued passports to ethnic Hungarians abroad.
Between 2018 and 2019, estimates suggest that between 100,000 and 300,000 residents of Zakarpattia received Hungarian citizenship. Hungarian officials were even accused of encouraging applicants to conceal this from Ukrainian authorities, which sparked a major diplomatic scandal in 2018 in the town of Berehove.
Despite holding Hungarian passports, these men remained citizens of Ukraine and were therefore subject to mobilization after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian officials note that the public exposure of prisoners of war often increases the risk of psychological pressure from the captors. The prospect of release can also be used for information and propaganda campaigns, even involving foreign leaders.
This is not the first time Hungary has received Ukrainian prisoners of war from Russia. On June 8, 2023, a group of Ukrainian POWs was first taken to Istanbul and then transferred to Budapest. Journalists who spoke with three of the eleven prisoners later found that only one of them was actually an ethnic Hungarian. One of the Ukrainians said he had been forced to claim Hungarian ethnicity under threat of being sent back to captivity.
