“If you want to analyze the election campaign, you have to draw a line on February 24,” said Andrea Virág, director of strategy at the think tank Republikon Institute in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. “Ever since the war started, it has been completely different.” The race – which will culminate in Sunday’s election – is now being presented by the opposition as a crossroads between Hungary’s eastern and western horizons. “We have only one choice: we must choose Europe instead of the East,” opposition candidate Peter Markey-Zei, the man who carries the hopes of every Orban critic, told supporters this month. Markey-Zee leads a united coalition of every major opposition party – a recent and fragile effort that symbolizes how dramatically the anti-Orban parties have been sidelined in recent polls. The war on the Hungarian border has also added urgency to what was already a thorny relationship between her government and the EU. While Orban has backed most of Europe’s sanctions against Russia, relations with dictators and democrats for years – he has focused on keeping Hungary out of the conflict and has avoided many opportunities to oust Putin even when the Russian leader is at war. Now, Orban’s political future is based on the success of the most complex change of shape to date – a self-proclaimed peacemaker who will not leave Russia.
Putin’s critic became a fan
When Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, launched his first invasion of a neighboring country in 2008, Orban – then in opposition after his first term as prime minister ended in 2002 – called for his ouster. .
But during his second, 12-year term in office, Orban has embraced a friendly and dependent relationship with Moscow that has made him more distant in Europe. In a speech in 2014 outlining his intentions to build a “free state” in Hungary, he cited Russia as an example. At their meeting in February, as Russian troops were concentrated on the Ukrainian border, Orban spoke eagerly to Putin about their ties.
The relationship between the two powerful men is supported by financial dependence but also ideological similarities, according to Peter Kreko, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute.
“Orban’s Hungary is a long way from Putin’s Russia – but Orban has already said that Russia is one of his role models,” Creco said. “This anti-Western, ultra-conservative, anti-LGBTQ worldview… (and) an ideology based on state information” is “quite similar” to Putin’s early moves as President, he added.
“Orban is the most pro-Putin prime minister (in the EU) and did not expect the invasion at all,” Creco said.
Meanwhile, as most EU countries have united in their support for Ukraine, Orban’s relationship with Kyiv has deteriorated over the years. It has thwarted the country’s efforts to forge closer ties with NATO and has clashed with successive governments in Kyiv. On Wednesday, the foreign minister accused the Ukrainian government of coordinating with Hungary’s opposition parties, without giving details.
This momentum has complicated recent EU efforts to punish Russia for its invasion. While Hungary has finally backed most of the sanctions revealed so far, Orban has been adamant that the measures do not extend to Russian oil and gas imports. Most of Hungary’s oil and gas imports come from Russia, and 90% of Hungarian households heat their homes with natural gas, Orban said during a recent visit to London.
“If the sanctions are extended to energy, a situation will arise in which the Hungarian economy will be under unbearable pressure and in the meantime it will probably not hurt the Russians in the slightest,” a Hungarian government spokesman told CNN. said Orban. position.
In this context, most observers expected that Putin’s war would damage the political fortunes of his ally. The opposition has long criticized the so-called Orban Eastern Open project, which targets trade with authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Turkey.
“Putin is rebuilding the Soviet empire and Orban is just watching it with strategic calm,” opposition leader Marki-Zei said at a rally this week, Reuters reported.
On the contrary – thanks to his repeated claims that his opponent would send Hungarian troops to Ukraine – Orban’s slight but significant lead in opinion polls has increased since the invasion. Marki-Zay rejected these proposals.
“The prime minister really shines in situations like this,” Virag said. “He really likes to be positioned as the defender of Hungary – that’s why their campaign strategy has always been to create enemies and dangers for Hungary.”
Hungary has received more than 350,000 Ukrainian refugees from the invasion, comparable to neighboring Slovakia, but fewer than Poland, Romania and Moldova, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
In a speech on Independence Day on March 15, Orban pledged not to send any weapons to Ukraine. He made no mention of Putin by name and refused to label Russia as the attacker, instead framing the clash between Eastern and Western powers, with Hungary “a piece in their game.”
“We are helping those in trouble, but at the same time we are not taking a single step that could get Hungary into trouble,” a spokesman for Orban’s government told CNN. “We can not help anyone while at the same time destroying ourselves – for example, we are engaging in a war that is not our own, in which we have nothing to gain and nothing to lose.”
This doubt seems to have helped his electoral position. But he loses even more friends in Europe.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, the EU leader with the strongest sympathy for Orban’s positions on social conservatism and the rule of law, broke with his ally to condemn his policy towards Ukraine last week. “Given the deaths of hundreds and thousands of civilians … it is difficult for me to understand this approach,” Duda told TVN24. “This policy will be costly for Hungary, very costly.”
And in a speech to the European Council last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Orban: “You have to decide for yourself who you are with.
“There is no time for hesitation,” Zelensky added. “It’s time to decide.”
“Hungary is a different country now”
Orban ousted any electoral challengers he faced over the past decade, largely aided by a series of institutional reforms that strengthened his power and turned the tide against opposition voices. “Hungary is now a completely different country than it was 12 years ago,” Virag said. “The whole structure of the state has changed; the institutions act as part of the government.” Orban has been stuck with EU leaders for years over his country’s hardline immigration policies and the crackdown on democratic institutions, including civil society organizations, the media and educational institutions. Fidesz’s party’s suspended from the main center-right bloc of the European Parliament in 2019, and Hungary – along with Poland – recently lost a legal battle over the EU’s attempt to block countries’ funding in response to their democratic backwardness . Hungary passed a law in 2017 imposing restrictions on foreign-funded NGOs. This has led to comparisons with Russia’s foreign agent law, which has been used to crack down on opposition voices and the independent media. University reforms, meanwhile, have ensured that the facility will now be run by institutions, whose managers will be appointed by the Orban government, which critics have said will extend Orban’s ideological footprint to higher education. Of Hungary. And the EU has often disagreed with Hungary on rule of law issues. A 2018 law passed shortly after Orban’s third consecutive term has created new courts under the Justice Minister to handle “public enterprise” cases, such as taxes and elections. A government spokesman told CNN that the country’s constitution, enacted in 2011 during Orban’s current term in office, “states that everyone has the right to freedom of expression and that Hungary recognizes and protects freedom of expression and the diversity of the press “. But for many Hungarians who oppose the country’s unfree trend, these elections represent a desperate final push against government intervention. “There are parallel realities in Hungary right now,” said Szabolcs Panyi, an investigative journalist who said he was one of many Hungarian reporters whose phones were monitored by spyware Pegasus. “Half of Hungarian society, [which] consumes the state media, sees Orban as a savior who protects Hungary from the Western world liberal elite “. Panyi predicts a wider threat. “There is a very viable possibility that this propaganda machine, which has been tested and tested in Hungary, will be exported to support like-minded right-wing leaders,” he said. Those who consume pro-government media networks in Hungary now often see a “pro-Russian narrative”, including allegations that Ukrainian aggression sparked a conflict that helped Orban send his anti-intervention message, Pani said. “They have a huge media empire,” Creco added of the Orban government. “There are voices of opposition, but they are much more silent. And by default, the (Hungarians) are echoing the messages of the government.” The electoral process has also been targeted. A law passed in 2011 restored the lines on the electoral map, to which opposition …
