Zelenskyy To Hold Meeting With Hungarian Prime Minister Soon - Ukrainian Foreign Minister

KIEV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 01st November, 2019) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hold a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the near future to discuss their tensions over linguistic rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko has said in an interview with the TSN.

The Ukrainian-Hungarian relations deteriorated following the introduction of Ukraine's new education law in 2017, under which the use of minority languages is allowed only in the first four grades of Primary education. Full switch to Ukrainian language-education is expected to happen in 2020.

"We plan a meeting in the near future. As we are planning it today, the format may change, but we plan to urgently organize a meeting between the [Ukrainian] president and the [Hungarian] prime minister, and also a meeting between ministers. This will be a brief meeting that I have agreed on with my [Hungarian] counterpart, Peter Szijjarto," Prystaiko said.

Ukraine has no hopes to solve the problem through just one meeting, as it is rather rooted in Hungary's domestic policy rather than in the bilateral relations, according to the foreign minister.

"But we will try to resolve these matters, national matters and matters related to education and language," Prystaiko went on to say.

Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the alliance maintains close contact with Ukrainian and Hungarian leadership for promoting consensus.

The education law has been criticized by countries that have ethnic minorities in Ukraine, including Russia, Moldova and Romania. Hungary has repeatedly blocked ministerial meetings of the Ukraine-NATO Commission, citing violation of rights of its 150,000-strong national minority living in Ukraine.