PM Orbán: Ukraine dangerous country

Eighty percent of online criminal fraudsters “have a Ukrainian background, the members being Ukrainian and headquartered in Ukraine”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview to public radio on Friday, adding that the fraudsters did not conform to the typical image of mafiosi but were “refined and clever” and used sophisticated technology to achieve their ends. “Ukraine is a dangerous country,” he declared.

Ukrainian fraudsters targeted Hungarians

Orbán said a call-centre network had recently been uncovered in Ukraine targeting Hungarians. The fraudsters pretended to call from retail banks and swindled Hungarians out of their money, he added. The prime minister also warned that Ukraine’s European Union entry would make it “much easier” for criminals to “infiltrate the fabric of the EU”.

• New target in Hungary after the spies: Ukrainian online fraudsters – police already issued arrest warrants

“They would receive the same treatment as financial service providers in the EU and it would be more difficult to act against them,” he said. “Keeping Ukraine outside [the EU] is undoubtedly the only way forward,” Orbán said. Orbán said that 169 suspects had been identified so far, and international arrest warrants had been issued against most.

“There is no doubt that what’s best is to keep Ukrainians outside” the EU, he said. More than 1.6 million Hungarians have already returned their papers in the Vote 2025 questionnaire, “and the knowledge that we need to tread carefully regarding Ukraine’s EU membership seems to be taking shape in Hungarian society,” he said.

Meanwhile, the government has given additional financial resources to the police so that more people can deal with online fraud, Orbán said. These scams can affect anyone who has a bank card or digitally managed savings, Orbán said. “All it takes is one wrong move, one click, and suddenly the scammers have taken the money.” The prime minister said online fraud had so far come to some 8 billion forints (EUR 19.8m). “The authorities are working quite well because they have already managed to recover 1.5 billion,” he said.

Additional financial resources could enable the authorities to allocate more people to preventing and eliminating such fraud and to remedy the damage already caused, he added.

CPAC Hungary 2025

Commenting on his experiences on the first day of the CPAC Hungary 2025 conference on Thursday, Orbán said he had talked with “many people”, and had the impression that “the conviction has grown markedly among Europeans that Ukraine’s accession would bring unmanageable challenges to the bloc.”

Orbán said many former and incumbent heads of state were attending CPAC, “members of the resistance that Hungary has been fighting for 15 years against Brussels’ imperialism, and idiotic initiatives such as allowing migrants into the bloc, gender activists and Ukraine’s EU membership.”

The “movement” is “slowly but surely” garnering a majority in Europe, he said. “We’re saying louder and louder that fast-tracked Ukraine membership is out of the question.”

The coming years will be about whether the “Brussels bureaucrats building an empire” would be able to strip member states of even more competencies and money than before, he said.

Similar steps had been a “standard answer” to crises in Brussels, he said. “Then it turned out they can’t use the extended competencies and can’t overcome the crisis,” he said.

“There is no point in relinquishing these competencies. We mustn’t let Brussels take even more money from us, even more competencies, to take out more loans and drag us into debt or to build centralised economic controls,” Orbán said.

Defence should be strengthened

Orbán said one of the weightiest issues was “how far Europe should strengthen its defence capabilities”. “We could easily be dragged into an arms race with the Russians, and that would eat up Hungarians’ money,” leaving less for schools, economic development, home purchase subsidies and family support, he warned.

Hungary has an interest in the speedy success of the US peace efforts, “so that at least a ceasefire is achieved in Ukraine and arms control negotiations with the Russians start, lest all our money is swallowed by the arms industry.”

Orbán called CPAC “the international Fight Club”, adding that “lies spread fast in politics”, and defence against fake news and misinformation was crucial in the discussion “of important issues” such as Ukraine’s membership.

Cooperation is taking shape “slowly but surely” between right-wing party families on a patriotic footing, the combined membership of which is now more than that of the largest party family, the European People’s Party, he said. “We are already more in numbers, although as yet not as well organised.” The Patriots for Europe alliance had been founded for that reason, and it is “getting gradually stronger,” he said.