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Monty Python star John Cleese rebukes Orbán over Russia ties and 2026 elections
John Cleese, the British comedian, actor, screenwriter and producer famed for Monty Python, has once again weighed in on Hungary’s political travails ahead of this year’s elections.
Cleese invokes Soviet invasion to chide Orbán
On the social media platform X, Cleese shared his preferred outcome for the Hungarian poll, Blikk wrote. He urged Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to remind voters that Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, with heavy loss of life. The remark responded to Orbán’s post insisting that Hungary could not be “blackmailed” by Ukraine. Kyiv has halted flows through the Druzhba (“Friendship”) pipeline, which carries Russian crude to Hungary (and Slovakia). In retaliation, Budapest threatens to veto a proposed €90 billion EU war loan for Ukraine.
Ukraine insists that Russian bombing damaged the pipeline; with vast swathes of the country deprived of electricity and heating by Moscow’s strikes, repairs will take time. Hungary’s government, by contrast, blames a political decision in Kyiv and vows to block the EU aid as a result.
PM Orbán: ‘Central Europe is far more complicated’
Orbán hit back at Cleese on X, assuring him that Hungarians “have not forgotten” 1956 and are working daily “to ensure that no one ever dares to attack Hungary again”. He added a barb: Central Europe, he quipped, is “far more complicated” than it appears from “the comfortable armchair of the Brit”.
This is not Cleese’s first foray into Hungarian politics. Ahead of the 2022 election, he backed the opposition, urging voters to recall who “invaded” the country that year.
Was it ‘Ukrainians’ in 1956?
Mária Schmidt, a museum director close to Orbán, then rebutted Cleese, noting that while the Soviet Union ordered the invasion, its forces included many Ukrainian nationals – and that the order came from Nikita Khrushchev, “who was Ukrainian”. In fact, Khrushchev was Russian, though he spent much of his career in Ukraine.
Cleese on Orbán’s daughter’s ‘exodus’
Cleese also commented last September when Orbán’s eldest daughter, Ráhel Orbán, left Hungary with her family for a “temporary” spell in America. He called it “very, very important” and reposted a claim that “rats are leaving the sinking ship”.
Curiously, before the 2022 poll – which delivered Orbán a fourth landslide – Ráhel and her husband, István Tiborcz (now among Hungary’s top five billionaires), had decamped to Marbella, returning only after victory.
If you missed our previous articles concerning the 2026 general elections:
- Leaving the sinking ship? Monty Python’s John Cleese reacts to Orbán’s daughter and son-in-law’s US move
- False-flag military operation linked to Russians could destabilise Hungary ahead of 2026 election?
Well it was Orban who removed the 1956 memorial from the front of Parliament so it is the height of hypocrisy for him to say that Hungarians have not forgotten about 1956. He has been working hard to make Hungarians forget 1956 and that topic is one of the last things he ever wants to talk about because he has been selling Hungary to the Russian enemy and works for them night and day.