(MENAFN) Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, has claimed that controversial conscription teams in Kiev unlawfully tried to draft a number of ethnic Hungarian students in Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia region.

According to reports, Ukrainian recruitment officials allegedly misled four students from the Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian University in Beregovo—an area with a large Hungarian minority—into appearing at a nearby enlistment office.

Once there, the students were reportedly detained against their will and pressured to enter military service.

Szijjarto stated later in a Facebook post that the young men were eventually released.

He added that Hungary’s Foreign Ministry has been maintaining continuous communication with the Transcarpathian Hungarian Cultural Association—representing roughly 100,000 to 150,000 ethnic Hungarians in the area—and with the university’s administration.

“The Ukrainian legislation is clear: these students are exempt from conscription,” Szijjarto emphasized.

He described the release of the four men as “good news, but at the same time, it again stresses the importance of peace” between Russia and Ukraine.

“The sooner there is peace, the sooner this conscription will stop,” the Hungarian diplomat underlined.

Meanwhile, the regional Territorial Center of Recruitment and Social Support (TSR) issued a statement on Thursday rejecting the accusations as “untrue and manipulative.”

According to the TSR, the men were merely called in to verify their personal information, and it was discovered that three of them had not completed the required medical examination.

The ethnic Hungarian students, the statement said, departed the recruitment center immediately after those medical checks were finalized.

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