With the influx of Ukrainians fleeing the war-torn east, Transcarpathia, home to the ethnic Hungarians split from Hungary post-Trianon, is undergoing massive change with populations exploding, construction booming, and fraud running rampant.
Authorities in Transcarpathia have recently uncovered budget fraud and abuse worth approximately 79 million hryvnias (just under $2 million), with proceedings initiated against 22 people, Kiszo.net has reported.
The abuses are being investigated under several articles of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, including fraud, abuse of office, and document forgery. Some of the damages have already been confirmed by expert opinions, while several cases are still under review. The authorities have proposed the pre-trial detention or suspension of several suspects.
The accused include local government officials, employees of educational, healthcare and cultural institutions, as well as managers of public and private companies.
Examples of the alleged fraud include a huge estate worth close to HUF 50 million ($140,000) illegally expropriated from a national park near Munkács, joint embezzlement during the construction of a sports facility, collusion during the construction of the new premises of the Ungvár Urban Transport Company, and a municipal water utility employee who paid 700,000 hryvnias for a chlorine shipment that never arrived.
Two cases being investigated at the Uzhhorod City Hospital include overpaying 500,000 hryvnias for electricity and paying almost the same amount in illegal wages. Minimum wage in Ukraine is presently some 8,000 UAH per month.
Equipment purchased for the emergency from public procurement was also allegedly stolen, overcharged for electricity consumption, and paid their buddies at the Transcarpathian theater, the Uzhhorod city hospital, and the waterworks.
In another example, the director of the kindergarten in Nehrovo (Maszárfalva) paid employees who didn’t even exist.
Meanwhile, Mandiner has reported on concerns over what locals see as a strategic operation to crowd out ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathian towns.
The population of the settlement near Munkács is being doubled with a mega-housing park, with new residents coming from Eastern Ukraine, the portal states.
Transcarpathia is the safest region in all of Ukraine, and these new developments are not good news for locals. “It is practically a population exchange,” Mandiner claims.
It further states that homes are being sold for pennies to people from Eastern Ukraine, overwhelming the local Hungarian community while traditional Ruthenian villages and towns are also facing an astonishing rate of immigration.
Concerns arise when new arrivals seem unable to accept the thousand-year-old fact of Transcarpathia’s diversity. There was even an example of Hungarian-speaking people being insulted by Eastern Ukrainians (speaking Russian) for not speaking the state language.
According to Karpatalja.ma, the residential park is not being built for locals but “for the employees of the region’s largest relocated business – a wind turbine factory,” which is being relocated from Kramatorsk to Perechyn and is being hailed as a boon to the city’s economic recovery.
The enterprise will create more than 2,000 jobs for Transcarpathians and “internally displaced persons.” Unfortunately, given the existing shortage of labor locally due to the fleeing male population, new jobs are actually bad for local businesses, especially since, as the newspaper boasts, “the average salary of employees ranges between 35,000 and 50,000 hryvnias,” far above the local average salary. In other words, local businesses will have an even harder time hiring workers.
The architectural heritage of the region is being replaced as well. In the densely populated residential area of Uzhhorod, just one kilometer from the Slovak border, a new shopping and entertainment center on 3 hectares and housing over 100 stores will open in 2026. The city, which previously had a population of 120,000, has now reached a population of 200,000, after hundreds of thousands of people from Inner Ukraine settled in Transcarpathia, fleeing the war, another Mandiner article revealed.
The developments in the region are backed by significant domestic Ukrainian entrepreneurial capital, as well as, according to some sources, foreign, including Arab, investors.
Housing prices in Uzhhorod have skyrocketed, with rents exceeding Budapest levels and some newly built properties selling for the equivalent of 800,000 forints per square meter.
“The apartments are paid for almost out of their back pockets, and everyone has their exemption papers in their pockets,” said György Dupka, a local writer and former county representative, referring to their exemptions from conscription.
Meanwhile, the incomes of locals are stagnating: the minimum wage in the area is equivalent to some $230, the net salary of public employees is around $286, while the costs of food and utilities have reached Hungarian levels.
According to Dunda, the region is changing rapidly, and the identity of Transcarpathia, previously multiethnic and referred to as “little Europe,” is undergoing a rapid transformation. As a result of the war, emigration, and influx, their proportion of ethnic Hungarians may now only be around 8 percent; according to the last census in 2001, they made up just over 12 percent of the Transcarpathian region.
