You're reading: Uzhgorod court arrests two suspects in arson attack on Hungarian center

A court in the Ukrainian town of Uzhgorod has ordered a 60-day arrest, without the possibility of bail, of two men suspected of attacking the local office building of the Society of Hungarian Culture of Zakarpattia (Karpataljai Magyar Kulturalis Szovetseg, KMKSZ) in February, the Zakarpattia regional police said.

The men in question, aged 43 and 55, are from Kropyvnytsky.

“Aside from the crime of intentional property destruction or damage (Part 2, Article 194 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code), the suspects also have been charged with a terrorist attack committed by a group of accomplices (Part 2, Article 258). Both criminal cases have been merged into one,” the police said in a statement.

The police also identified the owner of the vehicle in which the Kropyvnytsky residents had traveled to Zakarpattia region to commit the crime. He is from Cherkasy. Police already questioned him and searched his home. The vehicle has been seized. The man was summoned by the Zakarpattia regional police to show up on March 7 for investigative procedures.

It was reported that the building housing the KMKSZ office on Pravoslavna Embankment in Uzhgorod was set on fire twice in February. The first attack took place in the morning of February 4 after someone threw a Molotov cocktail into a window of the building.

Investigators have established possible involvement of two Polish citizens in the attack. Later the Polish news agency Polska Agencja Prasowa reported that three arson suspects had been held in Poland and two of them were now in custody.

The second arson occurred in the early hours of February 27. No one was hurt in the blaze.

Later the Ukrainian ambassador in Budapest, Liubov Nepop, was summoned by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, with Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto expressing concerns about “growing extremist political ideas” in Ukraine and noting that “members of the Hungarian ethnic community in Zakarpattia region are thus being intimidated.”

Iosif Borto, the first deputy chair of the Zakarpattia Regional Council and the deputy head of the KMKSZ, said he was convinced that it was foreigners rather than Ukrainians who were behind the attack on the KMKSZ office.

On March 4, Ukraine’s National Police Chief Serhiy Kniazev said five people had been arrested in connection with the case and the suspected organizer, a foreigner, was still wanted. One suspect was held in Cherkasy, two in Kropyvnytsky.

Head of the Zakarpattia Regional Administration Hennadiy Moskal said that among those who perpetrated the late February arson were participants in the Donbas military operation, while the attack itself was organized by an employee of the Transdniestrian “state security ministry” who ran back home after the attack and was now out of Ukraine’s reach.