“The commander in chief reported on recent drone incidents along the Ukrainian-Hungarian border,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a statement published on Facebook on Sep. 26 after a government meeting. “Ukrainian forces recorded violations of our airspace by reconnaissance drones, which are likely Hungarian,” it continued. “Preliminary assessments suggest they may have been conducting reconnaissance on the industrial potential of Ukraine’s border areas.”
Earlier this year, Ukraine’s Security Services (SBU) had detained two suspected agents of a Hungarian military intelligence network, whom it believes were tasked with gathering intelligence about the Transcarpathia region, which borders Hungary and contains a sizable Hungarian minority. The intelligence allegedly included information about the area’s ground and air defenses, and “to study the socio-political views of [the] local population, including scenarios of their behavior if Hungarian troops enter the region.”
“I instructed that all available information be verified and that urgent reports be made on each recorded incident,” Zelenskyy concluded in his statement, providing no further details. Hungary’s Ministry of Defense responded to Zelensky’s allegation later that day, insisting that Hungarian military drones had not violated Ukrainian airspace.
“The Hungarian Armed Forces did not carry out and did not receive instructions to carry out the alleged drone flight on the Hungarian-Ukrainian border, which has also been reported in the press,” the ministry said.
The ministry noted that Hungary had reinforced the protection of its eastern airspace months ago. The ongoing Adaptive Hussars 2025 national defense exercise, held in cooperation with NATO and scheduled to run through mid-October, has included regular updates for the Ukrainian side. However, the ministry said that no information about any incursion into its airspace had been received from Ukrainian authorities.
In addition to the Ministry of Defense, the Hungarian Armed Forces also issued its own separate statement, posted on the honvedelem.hu website, denying any violation of Ukraine’s airspace. According to the statement, the armed forces, the Ministry of the Interior and Ukrainian authorities are in close contact via a 24-hour hotline, and any border flights are mutually communicated in advance.
“A border flight cannot take place without notification,” the statement said. It also criticized images shared by the Ukrainian General Staff on social media, saying they lacked key data such as flight path, speed and altitude. The defense staff released two of their own maps showing the alleged incursion route between Tiszaszentmárton (300 km northeast of Budapest) and Solovka (in Ukraine), and confirmed that neither the Ministry of Defense nor the Hungarian Armed Forces had conducted any aerial activity in the areas referenced on Sep. 26.
While Hungary’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces responded with civility, matter-of-factly rejecting the allegation by offering reasons and proof, the country’s top diplomat, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó, reacted somewhat less tactfully, and certainly less diplomatically.
“President Zelenskyy is losing his mind to his anti-Hungarian obsession,” Szijjártó said in a post on X. “He’s now starting to see things that aren’t there.”
The upcoming seven-year budget of the European Union is “primarily about maintaining the Ukrainian military and state rather than focusing on the challenges of the European Union,” Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó claimed in Budapest on Oct. 1, ahead of an informal EU summit in Copenhagen.
According to state news agency MTI, Szijjártó alleged that “the EU’s security and economy have significantly deteriorated due to bad decisions in Brussels. Brussels is preparing for war, and they are trying to make Europeans, Hungarians among them, pay for it. […] This budget is practically a Ukraine budget,” his ministry quoted him as saying.
He argued that the priorities for the European Union should be resolving its ailing competitiveness, creating energy security and laying the foundations for European economic growth.
“Instead […] the European Commission wants to send Europeans’ money, Hungarians’ among it, to Ukraine, to spend on the Ukrainian state and military,” he said. “We want peace in Europe, while Brussels wants war. Unless there is a patriotic turnaround, we can count on pro-war, pro-migration and pro-gender policies from Brussels. We don’t want war, migration or gender madness, and we don’t want Hungarians’ money to be sent to Ukraine,” he added.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of October 3, 2025.
Producing journalism that is worthy of the name is a costly business. For over 30 years, the publishers, editors and reporters of the Budapest Business Journal have striven to bring you business news that works, information that you can trust, that is factual, accurate and presented without fear or favor.Newspaper organizations across the globe have struggled to find a business model that allows them to continue to excel, without compromising their ability to perform. Most recently, some have experimented with the idea of involving their most important stakeholders, their readers.
We would like to offer that same opportunity to our readers. We would like to invite you to help us deliver the quality business journalism you require. Hit our Support the BBJ button and you can choose the how much and how often you send us your contributions.
