Hungary and Ukraine will begin consultations on the rights of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarian minority, the countries’ foreign ministers said yesterday an early sign that strained relations between Budapest and Kyiv could improve under Hungary’s new government.

Bilateral ties between the neighbouring countries eroded for years under the pro-Russian government of former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which refused to provide Ukraine with money or weapons to assist in its defence against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Orbán, who was voted out of office in a landslide election in April, justified many of his government’s anti-Ukraine policies with what he said was the restriction of language and education rights for the roughly 100,000 ethnic Hungarians that live in the Ukrainian region of Zakarpattia.