When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after World War I, Hungary lost her most imposing fortifications. In the mountains of what is now Slovakia, Orava Castle so impressed Hollywood location scouts that it was used to film Nosferatu. The Romanians took Corvin Castle in Transylvania, though a full-scale replica still exists in Budapest City Park. In Mukachevo, Palanok Castle was inherited first by Czechoslovakia, then, after a brief Hungarian recovery in World War II, by the Soviet Union, and finally by Ukraine. Last October, the city council replaced a statue in the castle courtyard of the Turul, a mythological bird that supposedly guided the medieval Hungarian migration from Central Asia, with the Ukrainian trident, a symbol that has lately become ubiquitous on social media.

The Russian invasion has exposed a rift between Hungary, NATO, and Ukraine over a substantial and occasionally restive Hungarian minority in Ukraine’s southwestern province of Transcarpathia. Yet the rhetorical clashes between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are merely one facet of broader changes taking place within Ukrainian society. In the midst of a devastating war, a country whose short history has been riven by ethnic, linguistic, and cultural tension is gradually transforming into a more cohesive nation-state. Where that leaves Ukraine’s linguistic and ethnic minorities is an open question.