Hungarian PM demands Ukraine to guarantee implementation of 11 minority-rights to unblock cluster openings
Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said Hungary will only support opening new EU accession negotiation clusters for Ukraine if Kyiv guarantees the implementation of 11 demands concerning the Hungarian minority in Zakarpattia Oblast.
After meeting Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on 29 May, Magyar said Budapest wants assurances that ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine will regain full language, educational, cultural, and administrative rights.
According to Magyar, the demands mainly concern the right to use the Hungarian language in schools, local administration, and cultural life. He said negotiations with Ukraine are progressing at a technical level and expressed hope that the issue could soon be resolved, but stressed that Kyiv must provide guarantees for implementing all 11 points.
Romania closes Russian consulate and expels consul after drone incident
Romanian President Nicușor Dan announced that Romania will close the Russian consulate general in Constanța and expel the Russian consul after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Galați overnight.
The drone strike caused an explosion and a fire in an apartment on the ninth floor, injuring two Romanian citizens. Dan said Russia bears full responsibility for the incident and described it as the most serious security incident on Romanian territory since the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
Dan also said he discussed the situation with Mark Rutte, who expressed NATO’s full solidarity with Romania and reaffirmed that the Alliance is ready to defend every inch of allied territory.
Romania’s acting prime minister Ilie Bolojan had earlier said Bucharest was considering sanctions against Russian diplomats in response to the incident.
UN blacklists Russian forces over sexual violence against Ukrainian POWs, civilian detainees
The United Nations has for the first time added Russian armed and security forces to its blacklist of parties suspected of committing conflict-related sexual violence, according to an annual U.N. report cited by the Associated Press on 29 May.
The report says U.N. investigators independently verified 310 cases of sexual violence in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, despite Moscow refusing access to investigators. Most victims were Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees, the majority of them men.
The designation follows years of reports documenting abuse in Russian captivity. In 2024, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine recorded 376 cases of sexual violence linked to Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, including abuse of men, women and children.
A separate U.N. commission previously described Russian torture of Ukrainian POWs as “widespread and systematic.”
The report also documented 31 cases of sexual violence committed against Russian POWs and civilian detainees in Ukraine, but Ukraine was not added to the blacklist.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia rejected the allegations, calling them “unsubstantiated lies.”
The same U.N. report also added Israeli armed and security forces to the blacklist for the first time over alleged abuse of Palestinian detainees. Israel denied the accusations.