hungarian prime minister viktor orbán in ukraine, why one of the biggest critics of kyiv and military aid to ukraine in... europe came to the ukrainian capital, we are talking about this today on the bbc, live from london, jafer umerov is working in the studio. viktor orban, an outspoken critic of western military aid to ukraine, made an unannounced visit to the ukrainian capital. for the first time since the beginning of russia's full-scale war in ukraine. the last time he was in ukraine was in 2012. and today the prime minister of hungary met with president volodymyr.

with zelenskyi, the leaders discussed the relations between the countries, which have not been the best in recent years, precisely because of orban's policies. in addition , he called on zelenskyi to think about a ceasefire. in his opinion, ukraine should stop fighting and continue negotiations after that. orbán's visit to ukraine is the second day since his country began holding the presidency of the council of the european union for the next six months. let's hear how this visit was commented. both leaders. today we are with prime minister orbán discussed the most fundamental issues of our relations, our neighborly relations, trade, cross-border cooperation, infrastructure, energy issues. today we talked about the humanitarian sphere, about everything that affects the lives of our people in ukraine and hungary. during the next six months, hungary will preside over the european union. i came

here with my visit because peace is an important issue, the war in which you are now living intensely has a great impact on the security of europe. we highly appreciate all the initiatives of the president zelenskyi for the sake of achieving peace. i asked mr. president to consider whether it is not possible to go a little differently, take a break, cease fire and then resume negotiations, because a cease-fire could ensure that the pace of these negotiations is accelerated. and with us in communication from kyiv is my colleague, bbc correspondent zhanna bespyatchuk. i congratulate you, zhanna, this is how the hungarian leader was met, because after all, viktor orbán is known for his ambiguous statements, openly criticizes ukraine, and he is the only european leader who still maintains ties with russia and by putin greetings, jeff, let's say it was a long-awaited guest visit to the ukrainian.

why yes, because firstly, hungary, as you already mentioned, did not support, in fact prevented the adoption by the european union of all key decisions related to assistance to ukraine during the large-scale invasion of russia. in addition, viktor orbán is one of the few leaders of the western world, if we take the concept of the west more broadly than just the european union. who has not yet visited ukraine, but did so the day after how his country's presidency in the european union began. it is about the chairmanship of the eu council, where the heads of governments and states of the european union sit, it will last for six months, and now we can talk about the fact that this is a visit with signs and intentions to ensure... a warming of

relations between hungary and ukraine - another matter. how sincere it is is another matter, how long it will last, whether it is such a temporary political move, it will be worth watching, because until now hungary, specifically viktor orbán, as its leader, has been consistent, in relation to ukraine in only one way, in obstruction. the european union's support for ukraine since russia attacked ukraine. so, if we talk about orban's leadership in the eu council, yes, a person who constantly opposes eu aid to ukraine, as you already said, can he somehow personally negatively affect the further provision of this aid? in fact, not at all, certainly within the next six months. no, and this is an interesting and

important moment for ukraine in this story, because, well, actually, eu leaders, some of which, as well as the diplomats of the european union, recognize. on the record that sometimes it is even difficult for them to motivate themselves to shake viktor orban's hand, they were preparing for the fact that from july of this year viktor orban will head the eu council, and key decisions regarding military aid, regarding support for ukraine in general and the start of negotiations on ukraine's accession to of the european union, decisions on macro-financial assistance to ukraine until 2027, which... is extremely necessary for the ukrainian budget, the state budget, all these decisions were made before hungary took the lead the european union, specifically the council of the eu. and now it's 9 pm in kyiv, from all the statements that were made today, do you think

there will be any warming in the relations between ukraine and hungary? warming will obviously be certain. yes, in particular, it is worth mentioning another very important factor in relations, this is the issue of the linguistic and educational rights of the hungarian minority in ukraine, which viktor orbán often uses to put pressure on the european union on the one hand, and on ukraine on the other , and today we found out that there are points of intersection, possible compromises, it is possible... to go through the 11 demands that hungary expressed to ukraine regarding the rights of its minority, and accordingly, at least on some points, agree. but let's not forget, viktor orban, one of the few politicians in power in the western world,

continues to maintain ties with vladimir putin today. and here is the question, what will be stronger, more important for him, these are his connections and his... contact with vladimir putin, or the interests of the needs of the european union and his own country, the economy of which, by the way, is in a serious crisis. thank you, zhanna, bbc correspondent in kyiv, zhanna bespyarchuk was in touch with us. thank you. so, this is orbán's first visit to ukraine in a long time, but not the first meeting with zelensky since the beginning of the full-scale war. before that, they already had several private conversations during foreign visits. and... but the relationship between them can hardly be called warm. for example, back in 2022, when orban won the parliamentary elections, he included zelenskyi in the list of opponents who allegedly supported the opposition and conspired against him. last october, he met with

vladimir putin in beijing, where they discussed the country's cooperation in the field of gas and oil supplies. and in december of the same year, he blocked the eu's decision to allocate an aid package to kyiv. in the amount of 50 billion euros. hungary lifted the veto only after other eu leaders intervened at the summit on february 1 this year. and we talk about the significance of this visit with the director of the institute of central european strategy, dmytro tuzhanskyi. i welcome you on the air dmytro, ot the first visit and only in the third year of the war. some of the european politicians have managed to visit ukraine many times during this time, that's why. orban arrived just now? good evening, because the fact that viktor orbán remained one of the few, and interestingly, perhaps the only european or eu member state leader who did not visit ukraine itself, he

received, at least in the last year, could not be dragged any further - two invitations from viktor orban, i'm sorry, and he ignored them. even avoided meetings with volodymyr zelenskyi, and you know in today's european union, it is impossible to lead the eu council with an anti-ukrainian agenda and to ignore ukraine and not go to ukraine, and that is why viktor orban, as a talented and cunning politician, understood that this cannot continue like this, and chose the most successful moment to show his weakness, i.e., what he was reproached with in anti-ukrainian terms. russian position, he tried to turn it to his own strength, that is, after orban went to kyiv in the first days of the eu presidency, now it is difficult to reproach him for being pro-russian, in anti-ukrainianism, that's why it's such a trick, let's see if it will be possible to develop this trick into

something permanent and something substantive, but i would like to draw attention to the fact that serhiy rebrov was at the leaders' meeting, maybe we will soon have a friendly match between the national team of hungary and ukraine, maybe . it will be even, for example, in uzhgorod, where, by the way, the ukrainian national team played its first official match in history after ukraine gained independence, it will be one more gesture, but gestures will not be enough, it is necessary to... fill bilateral relations with substantive issues , this is actually to normalize this dialogue about the rights of the hungarian nationality. there are some such objective requests from the hungarian side that are more rational, there are frankly, let's say, absurd ones, such as recognition as traditionally hungarian, fortunately this is not in the official list of these 11 requests that were voiced in ukraine all this year, but no less, this dialogue must finally be brought out, you know, in some kind of predictable way. european, what hungary went through with the slovaks, romanians, and serbs, what denmark and germany went through,

for example, and signed these the bonn-copenhagen declarations, something like that can cause harm to ukraine, well, there is another spectrum, border infrastructure, the energy issue, until now hungary swings through ukraine, through friendship, this is a serious leverage of ukraine's influence on hungary, at the same time hungary, and few people know it , insures ukraine. supply of gas in a staggered order, now there will be a question of supplying electricity through the destroyed energy infrastructure to ukraine, that is, you know, there is a long list of very substantive, constructive questions, whether ukraine and hungary will finally get permission to to deal with these issues, and not, you know, exchange attacks, some provocations, well, we'll see, it's an open question, the closest thing will probably be a football match, then there will be other things. well, the football match is very interesting, but hungary's commitment to russia

has been known for a long time, and we have already heard what he proposed, that is, orbán proposed a ceasefire. didn't viktor orban come to kyiv to persuade ukraine to negotiate on the terms recently announced by putin? in my opinion, this is precisely viktor orban's idea, to be his this message was regarded as a message from putin or the message from xi that orbán is part of this big game of actually making peace in russia's war against ukraine, but in reality viktor orbán has not said anything to this is his long-standing position, he won the election in 2022 with this position, and he is unlikely to will change it, the way he, viktor orban, voiced this position in kyiv, very delicately and cautiously, in my opinion, looks more. as a gentleman's agreement between the ukrainian and the mountainous side, they said: okay, viktor, you will say what you always say

very carefully in kyiv, and we will not be offended by it, that is, you know, the relations between kyiv and budapest are reaching a new level, that is, we allow some such things that for viktor orbán are politically important, okay, he said, but for us, we prioritize the key thing, which is not to block ukraine on the way to membership in the european union, not to... get european aid, and now, by the way, on the agenda is 9 billion facility fund, which should go to purchase of ukrainian ammunition for ukraine, which hungary is blocking, i hope, breaking up, and other practical issues, and this is rhetoric, these are words, they are actually usually unpleasant, but if this is the limit of compromise, then it is very good that ukraine is making this compromise, in this case, on. .. well, as long as viktor orban will chair the eu council, will he be able

to maintain relations with ukraine, the eu and russia at the same time? briefly, if possible. viktor orban is already doing it. in parallel with his visit to kyiv, peter sierto spoke with mr. lavrov, and they are there they talked about cooperation and so on and so on. yes, so yes, viktor orbán will try to sit on that many chairs at the same time. as far as he can, it will be two, three, four or five. thank you, thank you, dmytro tuzhanskyi, director of the institute of central european strategy, you were in touch with us. thank you. so, that's all we have time to tell today. in order not to miss the most important news, we are on facebook, instagram and tiktok. you can watch our episode on youtube if you missed it on the air. more stories search our bbc website. ua, and we are back on the air tomorrow at 9 o'clock, take care!

they are mass killing ukrainian civilians. they kidnap and torture ukrainian patriots, activists, politicians, and volunteers. they are forcibly deporting and russifying tens of thousands of ukrainian children. when the russians stepped in after a month-long occupation, they left behind evidence of war crimes that shocked the world. for eight months

, the russians ruled in kherson, torture, murders and disappearances took place there. made another horrifying discovery: russia is deporting thousands children from ukraine, from the territory it invaded, and raises them as russians. against the background of mass murders, torture and abduction of children, their state propaganda and politicians repeat time and time again: let's destroy the ukrainian nation, just dumb these children down, just dumb them down. means that the russians are committing genocide in ukraine. politicians started saying this word in the spring of 2022. the exposure of what putin has done in ukraine seems to me quite close to genocide. yes, i called it genocide because it is becoming increasingly clear what putin is trying to erase

the very idea of ​​the possibility of being ukrainian. i think it's absolutely right that more and more people are talking already. let me remind you that we have to call a spade a spade, and what is happening in ukraine is genocide. but is genocide really the right name for the crimes committed by russia in ukraine? under the political surface there is a sharp dispute between the most famous scientists and lawyers. these political statements are just that , political statements, but genocide has a very clear legal definition. i just don't think we have... enough evidence to seriously say that this is what is happening. i firmly believe that this is undoubtedly a case of genocide. i have concluded that he meets the criteria for genocide under the un convention. we can definitely say that the military and political leadership

of the russian federation is quite realistically charged with the crime of genocide by the highest international standards. why are opinions divided, who is right, what evidence of genocide did the russians leave and what is missing, should ukraine even try to prove this crime, is it really important? by using exclusive testimonies of a number of victims of russian war crimes in ukraine, in-depth interviews with the best experts, documents and chronicles of russian war crimes, we sought an answer to one of the main russian-ukrainian questions. war, is russia really committing genocide in ukraine?

william schabas, one of the world's foremost authorities on genocide. in the fall of 2022. more than six months after the start of russia's full-scale invasion of ukraine, he published an article in which he claimed: there are sufficient grounds to talk about genocide in there is no ukraine. i thought that many of the accusations were not sufficiently supported by evidence to start talking about the term genocide. and since then, i've actually grown more confident in that opinion. ukrainian scientist dmytro koval, co-author of the ukrainian parliament's declaration that genocide is taking place in ukraine. he also wrote an article about it together with three other ukrainian colleagues. in her text, he directly dominates william shabas. in your opinion, what russia or

the russian armed forces are doing in ukraine is genocide or not? yes, in my opinion, this is genocide. this opinion is supported not only by ukrainian scientists, johns hopkins university lecturer eugene finkel, who specializes in the topic of mass violence, in april 2022 published a column in the washington post under the heading that what is happening in ukraine is genocide, period. the first thing that convinced me that genocide was taking place was the shooting and killing. and since then, i believe that what we see in ukraine has only strengthened these conclusions. mass killings of civilians in the kyiv region were discovered in the spring 2022, after russian troops retreated from there. they took place in various

cities and towns, but their main symbol was the butch. then the first serious statements about the genocide were made. once it was a quiet suburb of the ukrainian capital. nowadays, the town of bucha is synonymous with death. and devastation. hundreds of ukrainians died here, many were apparently executed by the russian military. bodies with signs of torture, rape and execution are exhumed. some, it seems, were killed with their hands tied. russian soldiers did not care about age or by gender one of those killed by the russians in buch was 41-year-old welder oleg abramov. russian soldiers killed him practically

next to his wife irina. i had a very good husband. on my birthday, which was in the 21st year, just before the war, he wished me. i am sure you have everything, everything will be fine, you have me, the russians came to their house on march 5, there were four of them, with machine guns, oleg went outside with them, one of the soldiers stayed with irina in the house, asked where the nazis were, i say i don't know who there is no hint here. "here you are, you have a nazi regime, we are forced to come and arrange for you such a life as the people in donbas

are suffering, you must be exterminated here, the intentions to destroy everyone, the russian military voiced in many telephone conversations intercepted by the ukrainian special services. and children, and women". became one of the victims of this intention. going outside, iryna saw his body next to four russian soldiers. you know, standing like that and thinking like that, nothing can happen, it

's just him, it can't happen. from one party understands that he is dead, because the head was almost gone. and on the other hand, this cannot be. it is not true. started screaming and then started asking them to kill me. iryna does not know why the russian military decided not to kill her, just as she does not know why and for what they killed her husband. she can only guess. they were his sections, they led him down the street, they... questioned him about something, maybe he was ukrainian-speaking, maybe there was some kind of tip-off, i don't know, what happened in bucha and other

places was a targeted attack on people, who we consider to be ukrainians, not by ethnicity, but by nationality, activists, statesmen, veterans and even simply. people who spoke ukrainian or were considered patriots. the tone of the discussion in the russian media changed from: we are liberating ukraine. ukrainians must be destroyed. and it happened almost immediately after bucha. almost immediately after the discovery of mass murders in buchi, the russian state media ria novosti publishes an article by political technologist timofiy sergeytsev on what russia should do. fight with ukraine, it explains one of the things announced by vladimir putin's goals of the war against ukraine. i decided to conduct a special military

operation. strive for the demilitarization and denazification of ukraine. in an article by a russian political technologist, being a nazi simply means being ukrainian. denazification will inevitably be de-ukrainization. the name ukraine cannot be preserved for a completely denazified state entity. a significant mass of the population of ukraine are accomplices of nazism and must be punished. historian timothy snyder called this text a russian textbook on genocide. one of the most frankly genocidal documents he had ever seen. eugene finkel agrees with this assessment. it talked about the destruction of ukrainian identity and the transformation of people into russians. the mere fact that a person has a ukrainian identity or is a ukrainian would be enough to become a target. according to this column, this article, which, i remind you, was published in

the state newspaper. and such things cannot be published without the direct approval of the state, approval from the leadership of the kremlin. the scientist reminds, direct the voice of the state was also heard after a few days. dmitry medvidev, the former president of russia and now the head of putin's united russia party and deputy chairman of the security council of the russian federation , wrote in his telegram: deep ukrainianism. which is fueled by anti-russian venom and blanket lies about its identity, it is one big fake. this phenomenon has never existed in history and does not exist now. changing the bloody and full of false myths consciousness of a part of the current ukrainians is an important goal. it sounded like an echo of timofey sergeytsev's article. soon a deputy of the russian state duma spoke openly

about you on russian state television. in the numbers of 2 million people, these 2 million people had to either leave ukraine or be de-nazified, that is, destroyed. thus , russian propaganda began not only to justify, but also to encourage violence against civilians. the killing of civilians is one of the key criteria for genocide, according to william schabas. and it is this criterion that convinces shabas that war crimes are taking place in ukraine, but not genocide. which is bigger the scale of the killings, it is more reasonable to conclude that this is done with the aim of destroying the group. and i think in practice, the worst months in terms of civilian casualties were the first months of the conflict, and then it went down. so, the evolution of the crisis

did not... strengthen the argument that genocide is taking place. is it really so? opponents of william shabas do not agree with this conclusion. i am not sure that the violence has decreased. we know about the cases of izyum, buchi, bordianka, irpen, kherson, because these cities were liberated. i am deeply convinced that when ukrainian the army will reach such places as, for example, melitopol, we will see mass burials and evidence of mass murders, we simply do not have access to these places now, no one but the russians do. with each deoccupation, as we have seen, new confirmations and new freedoms appear. before the deoccupation of the izyum region, even i, despite the fact that by this time i had already written the declaration of the verkhovna rada, and we had made significant progress in the work on the article, i could not imagine what we would find under the raisins. mass

burials of local residents. the armed forces of ukraine liberated izyum, a city in the kharkiv region region in september 2022. 447 bodies were found in mass graves there, including at least 414 civilians. this area has become a huge crime scene. forensic teams carefully remove hundreds of bodies from the ground. this is where horror acquires names and numbers. russia's unprovoked invasion killed many, we already knew that, but only now in liberated cities like izyum do we learn exactly who was killed and how. with the de-occupation of new portions of the territory, with the de-occupation of mariupol, we will face increasingly terrible statistics and confirmations that a genocidal campaign was really taking place there. therefore, we can agree with mr. shabes that we have.