The striking similarities between the speeches of Orbán and Putin

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has recently given his annual state of the nation address, followed by the “historical” speech of Vladimir Putin. The similarity in their rhetoric is so striking that it is hard to believe that Hungary and Russia are placed on opposite sides of the spectrum in world politics.

President Putin has delivered a state of the nation speech in Moscow, close to the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held a similar speech to a selected audience, and as hvg.hu notes, there are several topics in which they hold a similar view.

Blaming the West for the war

Both leaders are emphasising the responsibility of the West in the escalation of the war in Ukraine. “They plan to turn a local conflict into a global confrontation” – Putin is quoted by the BBC – which resonates well with Orbán’s views.

Being the leader of a NATO-member country, Orbán had to use carefully chosen words. But he reinstated that the West “did not isolate the conflict but lifted it onto an all-European level. It could have treated it as a local regional war”.

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Criticising the morality of the West

Both Orbán and Putin are questioning the morality of the West, and both are giving a great deal of attention to gender issues and pedophilia. According to Putin, the West is destroying its own people, where “the perversion that is child abuse all the way up to pedophilia, is advertised as the norm”. The West is a place in the Russian president’s eyes, where priests are “forced” to marry same-sex people.