Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ‘immediately order his agents to return home’, claiming that Hungary has turned into ‘an operational area for the Ukrainian secret service’.
Speaking in a video message published on Thursday, 26 March, Orbán said that there has never been an election in Hungary in which ‘foreign intelligence services have interfered’ on such a scale. He accused the opposition Tisza Party of being a revolving door for ‘Ukrainian spies’, referring to a recently declassified intelligence briefing claiming that IT specialists linked to Tisza have connections to the so-called IT Army of Ukraine and the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest.
‘They are working to ensure that a pro-Ukrainian government is formed in Hungary after the election—one that supports the war, cuts Hungary off from cheap Russian energy, and hands over Hungarians’ money to the Ukrainians,’ Orbán said. The prime minister added that ‘Hungarian authorities are constantly working to thwart foreign interference’ and are doing ‘everything they can to ensure that Hungarians can vote on their future without foreign manipulation’.
Orbán’s remarks came amid an increasingly turbulent intelligence and information war surrounding the upcoming election. The opposition and Western media, alongside certain European intelligence services, accuse Orbán of cooperating with Russia to influence the outcome of the vote, while the government alleges that the opposition Tisza Party is part of a coordinated foreign intelligence plot, orchestrated primarily by the EU and Ukraine, to undermine Orbán ahead of the election.
Shortly after the video message was published, the Ministry of Justice announced that it is filing a criminal complaint on suspicion of espionage against journalist Szabolcs Panyi. Panyi is at the centre of the information war surrounding the election. In early March, he claimed that Russian military intelligence officers had been deployed in Budapest to support Orbán’s campaign.
‘The Ministry of Justice…is filing a criminal complaint on suspicion of espionage against journalist Szabolcs Panyi’
The story was quickly picked up and amplified by Western media outlets and has served as a basis for further claims of Russian interference in the election.
On Monday, in a leaked audio recording, Panyi discussed sharing Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó’s contact details with an unnamed foreign intelligence service and referenced links to Tisza Party foreign policy expert Anita Orbán. Panyi did not reject the authenticity of the recording; however, he claimed that it was part of a smear campaign against him. The government has ordered an investigation into what it described as the wiretapping of one of its ministers.
In a post on X, Political Director of the Hungarian Prime Minister Balázs Orbán claimed that ‘according to the available information, Panyi Szabolcs received materials from foreign intelligence services and even contributed to the production of these materials.’ He added: ‘Anyone who cooperates with the services of a foreign state against their own country is not an insider, not an expert, but a spy.’
In a post on his Facebook page, Panyi rejected the claims, describing them as ‘false accusations’, while accusing the government of using tactics similar to those of ‘Putin’s Russia or Belarus’.
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