The Carpathian mountain chain lies along Ukraine’s border with Hungary.The vibrant and well-established Hungarian community inside Ukraine has escaped, like the rest of western Ukraine, the ravages that have swept Donbass and the east.
This is agricultural country, and despite being poorer than the rest of the country, life is gentler and prices are much much lower. The region gets financial aid from Budapest, and many towns and villages are twinned with Hungarian communities.
“As in the whole of Ukraine, Transcarpathia can feel the effect of the war, because the country is at war. Retail sales dropped 25 % this year. The situation is not as bad here as in eastern Ukraine, where there’s fighting, but people can feel it in their everyday lives,” says economist Oszkar Balogh.
There is less money, but it goes further than in Kyiv, yet the region is crying out for investment and like much of western Ukraine is a potential agricultural powerhouse if only modernised and restructure
