Verkhovna Rada MP Yuri Bereza, after coming back from a trip to the westernmost Ukrainian region did not find Ukraine there. He, known among other things, with inadequate statements and appeals such as “burn Crimeans when liberating the peninsula” or “shoot people for demonstrating of the St. George ribbons”, or create concentration camps for the supporters of the “Russian world” in Ukraine, after returning from a trip to Transcarpathia, said that “this region follows the path of the Crimea.”
“Transcarpathia, in fact, is a pseudo-republic within the Ukraine. I traveled through a lot of villages and settlements. Unfortunately, I did not see Ukraine at all! I can admit that I saw a pseudo-republic there. Everything began in the same way in the Crimea,” Bereza said.
It is quite expected that Bereza accused the Kremlin of what is happening in Transcarpathia, which allegedly “is conducting a hybrid war against the remnants of Ukraine.”
Commenting on this statement, the director of the Center for Geopolitical Expertise Valery Korovin expressed confidence that what was happening in Transcarpathia was provoked by the actions of the Ukrainian leadership aimed at unification, which inevitably provokes resistance of the ethnic groups that inhabit Ukraine.
“Ukraine is heterogeneous, polyethnic, diverse and multicultural. That is why the attempt to create there a single civilian political nation through Ukrainization and unification inevitably leads to its collapse. As, indeed, any other state of the post-Soviet space, be it Georgia, Moldova, or even Russia. All of these are traditional spaces that are disintegrated when applied to them by European modernist approaches in the so-called nation building,” Korovin explained.
Hungarian political scientist, journalist, member of the Valdai Club Gábor Stier, first of all, hastened to remove the blame for what is happening in Transcarpathia from Budapest:
“Hungary is accused of provoking separatism, but it is not so. Hungary does not in any way set itself the task of excluding the region. Hungary is not an enemy of Ukraine. We just protect our interests, we protect the ethnic minorities living in Transcarpathia. Ukraine declares that it is Europe, but the Ukrainian elite behaves towards non-European minorities in a completely different way. This approach, in particular – the law on education, has already been condemned in the Council of Europe. Yuri Bereza says that Transcarpathia is not Ukraine. On the one hand, he is right, there instead of the state institutions the power of numerous mafia groups engaged in smuggling. This is the life of ordinary people and officials, because it is impossible to live on wages. It’s very Ukrainian-like.”
As for the possible implementation of the “Crimean version” in Transcarpathia, then, according to Stier, he is sure that “in no case, of course, is not the people, but the Ukrainian authorities and the press are making the republic out of Transcarpathia.” That is, the return of all or part of the region to Hungary, in the opinion of Stier, is unlikely, if only because in the two-million region at best only 15 percent are Hungarians.