Death of Ukrainian conscript prompts row with Hungary

The death of a 45 -year -old ethnic racist in Ukraine, weeks after his recruitment in the Ukrainian army, sparked an angry row between the Hungarian government and the authorities in Kiev.

Jozsef Sebestyen, a double Ukrainian Hungary citizen, was beaten with iron bars after he was forcibly recruited on June 14, and he told his brother and sister Hungarian media.

Sebestyen, from Berehove, died in western Ukraine, there is a psychiatric hospital on July 8.

The army denied the circumstances surrounding its death, but its case has shed light on the forced recruitment in Ukraine, where the army seeks to defend the front lines of Russia in the face of severe losses.

“They took me to a forest with many other men and started hitting me there,” Sebestyen quoted the Mandiner news website in Hungary.

“The strikes were mainly in the head and body. They said that if I did not sign something, they will take me to” zero ” [the front line]. I hurt a lot, I couldn’t move. “

On July 10, Ukrainian Ambassador Sandour Vegier was called to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry in Budapest due to the case.

Prime Minister Victor Urban, the bitter critic of the Ukrainian government and the war effort, posted on Facebook: “A Hungarian citizen was beaten to death in Ukraine.

Later on the same day, the Ukrainian army published its complete denial.

“According to the final report of the hospital, no physical injuries were found during the medical examination,” the statement said.

“We firmly refuse any allegations of forced work, inhuman treatment, or human rights violations, whether by regional military centers or other military officials.”

The army goes to say it will be open to “a transparent investigation under Ukrainian law.”

The accident has become the latest flash point in a war of words between the Urban government in Budapest and the administration of Voludmir Zelinski in Kiev.

in May, The row spying arrests in both countries and the mutations of diplomats.

At the end of June, the Hungarian government published the results of the recent “national consultation”, in which eight reasons were provided for not allowing Ukraine to the European Union, and called on citizens to vote “no”.

More than two million actions, according to the results, which are not independently verified.

Objects of violence during forced recruitment in Ukraine are not new. Ukrainian men are eligible to obtain the army from the age of 25 to 60, and most men from the age of 18 are prevented from leaving the country.

“I still hear from relatives of those who were taken by the army who received their clothes covered with blood,” a Hungarian woman in Transcarpathia told the BBC provided that her identity is not disclosed.

“The situation has increased since the beginning of the war, but it has become particularly bad in the past two months.”

Often, I continued, medical certificates that give the exemption from the draft by soldiers – and the carriers are unacceptable in the vehicles and they are transferred. Thousands of dollars were requested, “crazy sums”, in exchange for leaving them in peace.

There are also allegations that government critics, including journalists, intentionally targeting recruitment.

Oil Diba, 58, Zakarpattya online editor, is now working on a hunger strike in military detention. He claims that he was transferred because his articles that were achieved in building wind turbines in the cabinet mountains disturb the authorities.

Ukrainians can take issues of unfair or violent recruitment to the Office of the Ukrainian Ombudging Secretary for Human Rights, DMYTRO LUBYNETS.

He recently said that his office received 3,500 complaints about human rights violations regarding recruitment in 2024, and more than 2000 complaints so far this year.

He said that criminal cases were brought against more than 50 recruits.

The right to conscientious objection was canceled in Ukraine when martial law was announced in February 2022 – the month of Russia was widely invaded.

At the request of the Constitutional Court in Ukraine, the Venice Committee of the Council of Europe He issued an opinion on the alternative service in Ukraine In March 2025.

“The countries have a positive commitment to establishing a system of alternative service that must be separated from the military system, it will not be of a punitive nature and remain within reasonable time limits,” she said.