Ukraine has alleged that reconnaissance drones from Hungary violated its airspace, a claim that has been met with a sharp dismissal from Budapest, escalating tensions between the two European nations.
On September 26, 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated that a preliminary military assessment indicated reconnaissance drones had violated Ukrainian airspace, potentially having flown from Hungary. Zelenskiy announced on Telegram that he had instructed officials to verify all available information and create urgent reports on each incident. The Ukrainian General Staff later provided more detail, reporting that radar systems detected a drone-like object twice on the morning of September 26 entering the airspace of the Zakarpattia region from the Hungarian side at different altitudes. In response, Ukrainian forces patrolled the area with their own drones.
The allegation prompted an immediate and strong rebuttal from Hungarian officials. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó responded on social media platform X, dismissing President Zelenskiy's claims by saying he is "losing his mind to his anti-Hungarian obsession" and "starting to see things that aren't there". The Hungarian Ministry of Defense has explicitly denied that its drones violated Ukrainian airspace. In a tit-for-tat exchange, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha condemned the Hungarian government's "hypocrisy and moral degradation," accusing it of serving as a "Kremlin lackey".
This incident occurs within the context of persistently fraught relations between Kyiv and Budapest, despite both being aligned within the EU and NATO against Russia's war in Ukraine. A central point of contention is the rights of the approximately 150,000-strong ethnic Hungarian minority living in Ukraine's western Zakarpattia region. Disagreements over language and education laws have led Hungary to block high-level NATO-Ukraine meetings in the past. Furthermore, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has maintained a stance skeptical of Western military aid to Ukraine and has preserved more cordial relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin than other EU and NATO leaders. This political friction was further evidenced on September 26 when Ukraine imposed an entry ban on three high-ranking Hungarian military officials, a move described as a response to a similar earlier ban imposed by Hungary on Ukrainian officials.
The allegation against Hungary comes amid a series of airspace violations in Eastern Europe that have raised alarm within NATO. Recently, NATO jets intercepted and shot down Russian drones that breached Polish airspace, and Russia was accused of sending fighter jets into Estonian airspace. NATO has condemned these actions as "escalatory" and part of a "wider pattern of increasingly irresponsible Russian behaviour". In response to the growing drone threat, European defense ministers agreed on September 26 to advance plans for a joint "drone wall" project along borders with Russia and Belarus to better detect and intercept unauthorized drones.