Border Ties: Hungary Steps Up to Support Ukrainian Refugees

Photo by Elekes Andor, via Wikipedia Commons

The news over the past week has been devastating to everybody. But in Hungary, the direct effects of the war in Ukraine can be seen in the form of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing across the border our two countries share. While some have ethnic Hungarian blood, we also see Indian, African students who are transiting to their home countries. But the vast majority are everyday Ukrainians: mothers, children, and elderly.

Unsurprisingly, as a country no stranger to foreign aggression, the people of Hungary are responding with unprecedented support. This is mostly coming from individual Hungarians who are co-ordinating food and accommodation efforts at the border and in Budapest, as well as charitable organizations — most notably the The Hungarian Maltese Charity Service — and churches and religious organizations.

At the border town of Záhony, the first way station for many refugees, the Church Times in an article by writer Alex Faludy, reports: “While the local government has set up a small overnight facility at Záhony, Hungarian Baptist Aid (Hungary’s largest relief agency) has also created a reception facility, with sleeping accommodation, in the Rákóczi Ferenc Reformed Church High School in the village of Tiszabecs, a road and foot crossing 90km away from Záhony. The senior co-ordinator is an experienced aid worker and Baptist pastor, the Revd Lajos Révész.”

“People are volunteering here not only from the local Reformed Church, but from no church at all — this matters to everyone,” the article quoted the pastor as saying.

Volunteers from the border report such an abundance of material donations, that they are able to deliver good to the needy within Ukraine itself.

Photo by Pakkin Leung@Rice Post via Wikipedia Commons

The Hungarian government, in addition to aid and relief efforts, decreed that refugees from Ukraine are entitled to free travel on trains and busses throughout the country.

In Hungary, where politics are divisive as any place, the common goal of support for neighbours in need has broad support across all sections of society, economical and cultural. But as the Church Times posits, it is still early days, and such solidarity may be put to the test before long: “To date, the refugee situation in Hungary appears to be challenging, but manageable. There are worries, however, about the future. A particular concern is how things may worsen should the present line of Russian advance cut off escape routes over the long Polish and Romanian frontiers east of the Carpathians. This would leave the Subcarpathian region as the only safe corridor, and risk extraordinary pressure on its crossing, creating a humanitarian bottleneck.”

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