Photo: EPA
This proposal demonstrates how important the elections in Hungary are for Moscow.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service allegedly proposed staging a fake assassination attempt on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in order to boost his chances in the parliamentary elections in April.
Last month, ahead of the crucial elections in Hungary scheduled for April, a unit of Russia’s foreign intelligence service raised concerns over a sharp decline in public support for Viktor Orbán, whose friendly ties with Moscow have long provided the Kremlin with a strategic foothold within NATO and the European Union, notes Catherine Belton, an international investigative journalist at The Washington Post who covers Russia.
“Such an incident would shift the perception of the campaign from the rational sphere of socio-economic issues to the emotional domain, where key themes would become state security, stability, and the protection of the political system,” the report states. It was prepared by operatives for the main political influence unit of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
The journalist adds that Russia is not the only country that could potentially support Viktor Orbán in one of the most challenging campaigns of his career. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Budapest last month, telling Orbán that “your success is our success,” and Orbán is openly hoping for similar support from U.S. President Donald Trump.
It remains unclear how many high-ranking officials in the Russian government were aware of the intelligence proposal. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed questions about the report, calling it “yet another example of disinformation.”
In addition, Russian efforts to support Orbán reportedly included a Kremlin-backed social media campaign aimed at spreading the narrative that Orbán is the only candidate capable of protecting Hungary’s sovereignty.
“Orbán has been one of Russia’s strongest cards. It is hard to imagine that the Russians would not be willing to help if things started to go wrong,” said one Western official.
