Following his address at the Heroes’ Square rally on 15 March, Péter Magyar, the rising opposition figure, held a press conference where he discussed electoral prospects, Vladimir Putin, and Hungary’s Russian gas purchases. He also addressed the Ukrainian aid that Viktor Orbán is suspected of obstructing.
Neither Putin, nor Zelensky shall threaten Hungarians
According to a Telex summary, Magyar responded to Putin’s recent remark that Russia would continue supplying gas to Hungary (and Slovakia) for as long as these nations stick to their current policies. For Hungary, that implies Orbán’s government will keep blocking financial and other aid to Ukraine, expansions of sanctions against Russia, or restrictions on Russian travel.
Magyar insisted that neither Putin, Zelensky nor Orbán can intimidate Hungarians. He was alluding to Zelensky’s ill-judged recent comment that Ukrainian soldiers would be given Orbán’s address to “have a chat” with him by phone over his EU vetoes—a statement odd in itself, veering from home address to phone number. Government-friendly media have dubbed it an unprecedented, life-threatening menace.
Péter Magyar to visit at least 150 settlements
On Russian gas, Magyar said he would not rule out buying from Gazprom but stressed the need for diversification. He advocated pragmatic cooperation with Moscow on energy, citing Hungary’s geographical realities. Once the long-term contract expires, fresh negotiations will ensue.
Magyar also claimed the Tisza Party leads in 50 constituencies by margins beyond the margin of error, with 26 seats showing gaps of just 3-5-6 per cent. He is convinced, however, that the smear campaigns—now aided by artificial intelligence—will intensify in coming weeks. For his part, he plans to visit at least 150 towns, up to eight a day.
If you missed our previous articles concerning the 2026 general elections:
- Massive Ukrainian flag at Péter Magyar’s march yesterday: did Orbán’s lot foot the bill for the provocateurs?
- Hungary election 2026: one month to go – rules, new map and who’s on the ballot
Reuters reports that Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán is mobilizing online supporters.
In early March, Orbán launched a “40-day digital challenge,” urging his grassroots supporters to spend at least 10 minutes a day sharing posts and comments on social media. He hopes this will counter the strong online presence of his rival, Peter Magyar of the center-right Tisza party, who is leading in the polls.
Orbán’s attempt to mobilize online support for his nationalist Fidesz party among its predominantly aging electorate comes after platforms like Meta and Google halted political advertising last October due to new Europe-wide restrictions on such paid ads, which had been Fidesz’s main source of revenue.
Orbán’s government had dominated the digital sphere for years through multi-million-dollar advertising expenditures, but the EU law has forced Fidesz to rethink its strategy. It requires large technology companies to clearly label political advertising and disclose who paid for it and how much, otherwise they face hefty fines.
Now the party is relying on the help of “digital warriors,” as its leaders call the grassroots activists who were trained at party events in how to post and comment most effectively on Facebook, as well as on broader “digital citizen circles” of supporters who communicate in online chats.
Peter Kreko, director of the think tank Political Capital, said, “The carpet-bombing strategy no longer works; they can no longer get their messages onto everyone’s screens with paid advertising.”
Whether this tactic will pay off remains to be seen.
Observers say that Magyar’s less formal approach, in which he personally writes posts and comments, has allowed him to successfully reach voters, especially younger ones.
An analysis by the news site Telex from February revealed that 179 Facebook posts by Magyar, who has 833,000 followers, received 9.6 million reactions, while Orban’s 278 posts garnered 5.2 million reactions, despite having 1.5 million more followers.
A survey conducted last month by the Median polling institute also found that 67% of those under 30 support the Hungarian party Tisza, while only 8% support Fidesz.
The rally in Debrecen primarily drew older supporters, some of whom stated they actively share Fidesz content online, while simultaneously emphasizing the value of door-to-door campaigning.
‘Péter Magyar gears up for a new cooperation with Putin.’
He has not won the election, so what does this really mean?
‘A survey conducted last month by the Median polling institute also found that 67% of those under 30 support the Hungarian party Tisza, while only 8% support Fidesz.’
Given their incredibly inaccurate polling in the 2022 Election, and their wild claims for this cycle, Median is not a credible polling company.
Another proof of this lack of credibility is not mentioning Mi Hazánk, which has a very good hold on many in the under 30 crowd.
😴😴😴😴
At an event in Budapest on Sunday, Péter Magyar accused Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of recruiting Russian agents to interfere in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
“Orbán has invited the most capable Russian agents to our country to influence the elections and once again rob us of our most sacred possession: Hungarian freedom, for which our ancestors gave their lives,” Magyar said.
“Lies, deception, and intimidation—that’s what they have in store for us. Viktor Orbán has sold Hungarian freedom for 30 pieces of silver, for himself and his dynasty. Shame, shame, shame,” Magyar said.
The NZZ writes that Magyar consistently emphasizes he will end the obstructionist policies in Brussels as well as the collusion with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin. This could ease tensions not only with the EU but also with Ukraine.
Russia therefore has a vested interest in Orban remaining in power as its most loyal European ally. The Kremlin is said to have sent a team of three intelligence agents to the embassy in Budapest – tasked with supporting the ruling Fidesz party with a social media campaign designed in Russia.
Last week, the usually well-informed investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi reported on the plan, citing European intelligence sources. Magyar picked up the story a few days ago, writing on his Facebook page that the team from the Russian military intelligence service GRU had been in Hungary for weeks. He stated that it was unprecedented for a government to attempt to avert an election defeat through foreign interference.
The opposition leader even compared the situation to the bloody suppression of the 1956 popular uprising. Like the then-communist leader Yános Kádár, Orbán is also bringing Russians into the country. Magyar called on the Prime Minister to immediately end the operation and expel the agents equipped with diplomatic passports. “Russians, go home,” he wrote – the emotionally charged slogan of the failed 1956 revolution.
Meanwhile, the head of the Tisza party became more specific, stating that the operation was scheduled to begin in the coming days. Fourteen AI-generated videos aimed at defaming a Tisza candidate and his family members had already been produced. They were to be distributed primarily on TikTok via fake accounts.
On the Russian side, the project is apparently under the supervision of Sergei Kiriyenko, the First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration.
In the fall of 2025, under his supervision, the new Department for Strategic Partnership and Cooperation was established within the Kremlin administration. This department is responsible for Russia’s soft power in the territory of the former Soviet Union. It also maintains sections for Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic states, and certain African countries important to the Kremlin.
The disinformation campaign in Hungary is modeled on Moldova. There, the department attempted to influence the recent elections with the help of Kremlin-linked businesspeople, political advisors, money transfers, and a social media strategy – with limited success. According to the Financial Times (FT), the Russian PR agency Social Design Agency is said to have developed plans for Hungary. This company has been subject to EU sanctions since 2023 and US sanctions since 2024.
Together with a partner company, the agency is accused of large-scale disinformation activities in Western Europe, including the so-called doppelganger campaign. The websites of established Western media outlets were meticulously replicated but filled with misinformation.
The campaign planned for Hungary is intended to portray Magyar as a puppet of Brussels and his party as a disparate group of incompetent individuals, according to a draft proposal from the agency seen by the Financial Times. Orban, on the other hand, is depicted as a strong leader with global influence, the only one capable of guaranteeing Hungary’s sovereignty. The content is tailored specifically for the country and is also intended to be disseminated by local influencers. “Direct support from Russia could be counterproductive,” the newspaper quotes from the agency’s proposal.
Andras Racz, a security and Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that any cooperation with the sanctioned Social Design Agency is prohibited for Hungarian citizens and could also cause them problems abroad.
‘The disinformation campaign in Hungary is modeled on Moldova. There, the department attempted to influence the recent elections with the help of Kremlin-linked business-people, political advisors, money transfers, and a social media strategy – with limited success.’
It is true that Russian attempts to thwart The Western Elite, via public communication mediums, have, at best, met with limited success.
And, as you note, Moldova is a case in point – The Western Elite, particularly with efforts by the French, successfully having overthrown that nation’s democratic processes to install their puppet – Maya Sandu; she who, being a New England-educated Lesbian, could never have been elected in Europe’s most Orthodox nation, without an incredible amount of Western disinformation, misinformation, and subterfuge.
The Russians tried to thwart that operation, but, they were spectacularly UNsuccessful.
🇷🇺 😍🤥
So the guy, that appointed the global leader of Shell to be his energy minister, says he’ll continue the cooperation with Russia, for which he critisized Orbán.
Very consistent indeed.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Let’s see when the next window-jumping incident occurs, or if there’s another fatal stomach upset.
Russian Colonel General, Doctor of Historical Sciences Leonid Ivashov in an interview with Republic again criticized Putin for starting a war against Ukraine:
– As a scientist, as a doctor of sciences, who has been dealing with these issues for many decades, I see that Russia today, compared to the Soviet Union, to the Russian Empire, to the Moscow kingdom, has lost the respect of mankind. It is simply shameful, humiliating and even scary. When out of 193 countries of the world at the UN General Assembly only eight states are in favor of our position, 73 abstain, and the rest are against us, it is a bit scary…
Not a single powerful state stands on Russia’s side today. Our only military-political ally is Belarus.
We were taught at the academy that if wrong decisions are made up there, then no matter how the soldiers at the tactical level fight and resist, the decisions of the higher leadership suppress all the efforts of the lower troops, lower formations, units and so on. Our teacher always gave us such an example. It is necessary to force a large river. But if the decision is made at the top to force it not across, but along, no matter how well you swim or fight, you still will not force the river.
And here, a fundamentally wrong decision was made. And primarily on a geopolitical level. This is what I was talking about in my famous address. And that is why we could not get military support even from Belarus…
On the one hand, we have the best missiles, for example, Bulava, which reaches the US in so many minutes, submarine Poseidons, and so on. But on the other hand, we started the war on the battlefield, fighting with outdated weapons, starting with a soldier’s bowler hat and ending with body armor. Moreover, our body armor was made of foam, plastic, and so on. And what was the result? We were essentially defeated in the very first days.
“We turned out to be idiots,” summarizes General Ivashov.
And what’s new in America? Focus reports. In a conversation about the war in Lebanon, Donald Trump compared the situation there to that in Ukraine. He expressed surprise that people in both countries continue to live despite the war.
The US president responded to a question about Israel’s military intervention in Lebanon with an anecdote. He recounted a meeting with an influential Lebanese man whom he asked: “Really? How do people live in Lebanon? Your parents live there?” The man replied: “Oh yes, they lived there. And over the years, they got used to it being bombed.”
Then Trump steered the conversation to Ukraine: “People are living in Ukraine, you’d think they weren’t living in Ukraine, but they are living in Ukraine. I don’t know if I would, but they are living in Ukraine.” He then turned his attention back to Lebanon: “They live in Lebanon. Hezbollah is a major problem, and it will be eliminated quickly.”
Hungary will certainly benefit massively from these two intellectual giants who are friends.
Did Orban back the wrong horse?
After four years of full-scale war, Russian state television has for the first time admitted that it will not be possible to defeat Ukraine. This was stated by Russian State Duma deputy Konstantin Zatulin on Channel One.
Zatulin openly criticized one of the invited “experts” who proposed to liquidate Ukraine and install a pro-Russian government in Kiev. The deputy emphasized that Russia does not have the strength to implement such plans.
“Of course, there is no limit to fantasy. If the sea is up to your knees, you can suggest anything and talk seriously about it. First of all, I would like Ukraine to be a failed state, so that they would come to their senses, turn into a federation, enter into a union with Russia and Belarus or cease to exist at all. The problem is that so far we have not achieved this, and at this stage we are unlikely to achieve it. Therefore, we can stop talking about it… When you talk about going to the borders of Poland and creating a government that will take power there, just write – “it doesn’t happen. At this stage it definitely doesn’t happen!” – Zatulin said.
I find it both disingenuous and ignorant for commenters to these articles to maintain an entirely partisan narrative. Take for example the rather ignorant fellow who disparagingly defamed “intellectual giant” Donald Trump. For his information, Trump defeated not only the best candidates the Democrats threw at him – in a nation of 340 million many smart people. For example the not-so-smart Kenyan Prince Obama Hussein Baraq, who weaponized the entire federal bureaucracy against him, and backed and promoted his candidates; but he defeated brilliant and accomplished Republicans too. In the primaries they fell one after another like dominoes. Trump not only won once, but twice. As dumb as he is according to the posters here who apparently have the intellectual capacity of my rubber plant, he took them down like you take down clownfaces at a shooting gallery.
And he’s changing the world after a series of American presidents failed to do the right thing.
Europe, the EU, and NATO are precisely where they were before Trump precisely for those reasons – and they are where they are now because Trump made them do the right thing.
Moreover, one cannot compare Hungarian politics and security needs with the American. America has geopolitical partners – some of which cooperate, and others don’t. Read all about it in the papers on the current war with Iran.
So why would a partisan ignoramus expect it to be any different; why would such closed minds not see a similar pattern with Hungary and the EU? If the USA cannot control its partners, why could the EU? And why should a sovereign nation like Hungary agree with everything with an un-elected body of political partisans paid for by the political left with its thousands of NGOs, for which Hungary has not signed up, and allow these malcontents to impose their agenda on it through lawfare?
The EU was formed as a free trade agreement, all changed by the Lisbon Treaty into a political infrastructure to make of the EU a United States of Europe – whereas not the voters, but politicians not chosedn by the people (politicians who speak not a word of Hungarian or have any connection to Hungarian culture) choose what’s what? Many Hungarians, as well as tens of millions of other Europeans don’t agree with this arrangement. And rightly so.
Hungary’s security needs, given the aftermath of WWII and 1956, matter only to those who remember both. It matters only to those who remember Budapest in ruins.
Brainwashing is of value only to those who have overcome it – and lived through it. Most of those Hungarians have purged their brains of it. Those who have not participate in Facebook posts and in an alternate reality whereas charges of corruption against one candidate – unproved even after myriads of EU investigations – are to benefit another candidate who has a good mouthpiece like Obama, and is free of any useful history, accomplishment, and substance. In other words, another Empty Suit with a paid for by foreign sources publicity firm.
If you fail to recall the actual reality of the Skinny Kenyan with the “authentic American birth certificate” seen here – https://web.archive.org/web/20040627142700/eastandard.net/headlines/news26060403.htm – all I can advise is for you to remember is the Empty Suit with the Empty Speeches written for the teleprompter who spent eight years of his presidency sitting in an Empty Chair wearing his Empty Suit, plotting the downfall of his successor
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/obamas_coup_attempt.html
to preserve his legacy now playing out in Iran.
https://andrewgbenjamin.substack.com/p/and-then-they-turned-up-dead
The partisans commenting here probably have not even become remotely familiar with it – or history itself. Even if they have opinions, as uninformed as they happen to be. For the rest, I refer you to the archives.
https://andrewgbenjamin.substack.com/