Ukraine’s government is going to set on an emergency mode from 1 March, 2019 for 90 days on the territory of the Zakarpattia Oblast, which includes a restriction and even a particulate travel ban within the region. It’s been known from the photos reporting the labor results of the Coordination group of the Anti-terrorist center of the Security Service of Ukraine in the Zakarpattia Oblast.

According to the report, a large-scale anti-terrorist exercise was carried out in the period from 15 to 17 August together with regional units of a number of state paramilitary organizations, including the Security Service of Ukraine.

“During the exercise provided on the territory of Velykyi Bereznyi, Perechyn, and Uzhgorod an interdepartmental interaction on prevention and neutralization of sabotage and terrorist threats at the high-risk facilities and the congregate settings was trained”

According to information of sources close to the department, the preparation for setting out an emergency mode is well under way. At the moment the SSU is providing activities, involving agents, to control key Hungarian national organizations, community leaders, and representatives of the Hungarian diaspora in the local government. Besides that, it’s been reported that operational and investigative activities are possible towards the people mentioned. Another Ukrainian Security Service’s know-how has become a local media ban:

“At the moment, a list of web-papers, local radio stations, TV-channels, and newspapers, which will be banned at the beginning of 2019, is being composed”

The final touch in the framework of a preparation stage will be a silent exercise on the localization of riots in the key cities of the region as well as a training of actions of the security institutions in case some mythical terrorists occupy municipal authorities’ buildings.

“During the final stage of the preparation to set up the emergency mode in the region, a plan of a sudden exercise on training the actions of security institutions after terrorists occupy buildings of municipal authorities in the Berehove and Vynohradiv regions is elaborated”

Obviously, activation of anti-terrorist activities of the Ukrainian security forces in Zakarpattia has little basis for itself, at least due to a low level of terrorist threat in the region. Apparently, the fight against terrorism just covers up illegal actions of the Ukrainian authorities against representatives of the Hungarian ethnos. Recall that in the past, official Kiev repeatedly carried out such restrictive measures bordering on discrimination based on ethnicity, not only against the Hungarians, but also other national minorities on the territory of Ukraine and Zakarpattia, in particular. Thus, one of the most resonant attacks of the Ukrainian government on minorities was the Law on Education of 2017, which restricts the right to study in national languages. The reason for the oppression is also the active participation of the Hungarian government in the fate of representatives of the Hungarian community abroad and, in particular, their inclusion in the political system of Hungary. Another stumbling block that causes Kiev to be particularly irritated is the periodic demands for greater autonomy and independence for local authorities in the Zakarpattia region. However, it should also be remembered that today national minorities in Ukraine are forced to tolerate harassment not only from state institutions, they also often suffer from nationalist aggression from the new Ukrainian “patriots” and are constantly at risk of getting to the hot hands of numerous right-wing extremist organizations. In such cases representatives of ethnic minorities are not in a position to count on the support of the state, among other things, because nationalism has now become an inseparable part of the new Ukrainian government.

It is obvious that aspiration of the representatives of national communities to the greater autonomy of the Transcarpathian region and the prospect of isolation of this region causes Ukrainians to fear for their own territorial integrity and sovereignty. In this connection, strengthening of presence of security agencies and the introduction of the emergency regime in Transcarpathia on the eve of presidential elections in Ukraine acquires a new meaning. Such maneuvers by the official Kiev are unequivocally illegal and must be taken into account not only by representatives of the Hungarian community, but also by other ethnic groups traditional for Transcarpathia. There is every reason to believe that restrictive measures against the Hungarian minority are only first steps of Kiev trying to avoid war on several fronts. In case of success with the Hungarians in Transcarpathia, the Ukrainian authorities with a high degree of probability will apply the already run-up scheme also in other regions where ethnic minorities traditionally live. Thus, in the near future, the regime of emergencies can be introduced on the territory of Chernivtsi and Odessa regions. In this case, enslavement under the aegis of the fight against terrorism threatens representatives of the Romanian, Moldovan and Bulgarian communities in Ukraine. It is not ruled out that such restrictive measures can be taken against Poles living on the territory of the Zhytomyr and Khmelnytsky regions, as well as Crimean Tatars. In this case, representatives of national communities would lose not only their influence on the country’s political system, but also the ability to defend their national interests in domestic affairs. Apparently, it is precisely this “toothless” position that the present authorities in Kiev are seeking for them.