"The part of the press which claims to be independent is now also willing to sell out their homeland for Ukrainian money" – Máté Kocsis, leader of Fidesz's parliamentary group, said this on Tuesday, following the meeting of the Parliament’s National Security Committee, unexpectedly accusing the Hungarian independent press of using Ukrainian money to launch a smear campaign against Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Kocsis presented no evidence to support his claim, saying only that the secret services had informed the National Security Committee that the Ukrainian state was trying to discredit the Hungarian prime minister with the help of Hungarian and foreign journalists. The leader of Fidesz's parliamentary group said that the goal was to "undermine the international image of the prime minister and weaken Hungary's ability to assert its interests" by publishing articles and materials containing falsehoods, "capable of negatively influencing international public opinion".
Kocsis also suggested that the Ukrainians had allegedly already started work on this. "The work and the gathering of information as well as the fabrication of fake news by the Ukrainians has already begun, and some members of the Hungarian press have also been involved." In another post, Kocsis wrote that Ukraine is attacking Hungary's sovereignty with help from Hungarian citizens. Although it would be important to know on what information and evidence the secret services base their claim that members of the Hungarian press are involved in the alleged Ukrainian smear campaign, and who exactly the Ukrainians may have involved in preparing the operation, he did not say anything more.
This was instead done by the pro-government Magyar Nemzet. In their article on Kocsis's announcement, they write that according to "information" they received, as part of the Ukrainian secret service operation to discredit Viktor Orbán, "Direkt36, which calls itself an investigative journalism center and operates on Telex's platform, has already begun making a discrediting video". Magyar Nemzet also failed to provide details or evidence to support their allegations, but to be on the safe side, they asked Direkt36 if they had "received any Ukrainian support".
In response to Magyar Nemzet's accusations, Direkt36 wrote that not a single word of the pro-government newspaper's allegations is true. The documentary, like all articles and other content published by Direkt36, is the result of the work of their editorial staff. Neither the film nor any of their other materials were financed by Ukrainian funds. Along with several other newspapers, Telex also received a similar question from Magyar Nemzet, to which our editorial office replied that it had not received any Ukrainian funding. According to Magyar Nemzet, 444 and HVG did not respond to their request, from which they concluded that "it remains to be seen whether or not they will deny the accusation".
It is telling that by a "discrediting video" Magyar Nemzet is referring to the Direkt36 documentary about the business empire built up around the Orbán family, which is being released on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the investigative journalism center. The wealth of the Prime Minister's father, Győző Orbán, and his son-in-law, István Tiborcz, has been a topic in the independent press for years, and the cases are well documented.
No more dollar-funded media
Without evidence and factual information (unless one considers the "information" of Magyar Nemzet as such), the matter of the alleged Ukrainian smear campaign is up in the air, but is nevertheless perfectly suited to fuel the smear campaign against the part of the press critical of the government which has already been going on for years.
The only change now is that dollar-funded media is being replaced by Ukrainian-funded media, and instead of rolling dollars, Fidesz will be using rolling hryvnias in its communications.
The bottom line is that practically everyone who says or thinks anything that differs from how Fidesz and Viktor Orbán see a particular subject, or is critical of the government's policies or the wealth of the prime minister's family and businessmen close to Fidesz, is a traitor and is on the payroll of foreign powers. This is what the Sovereignty Protection Act passed at the end of 2023 was about as well, and the government made no secret of its intention to "make things difficult" for "left-wing journalists, pseudo-NGOs and dollar-funded politicians". The only thing that keeps changing is who they think is giving the money: Soros, Brussels, America, and now Ukraine, as a new player.
It is yet to be seen how much the Fidesz communication machine will latch on to the alleged Ukrainian smear campaign. If it does, then we are about to see a battle on two fronts in Fidesz's alternate universe where there's always an enemy to be fought. In a radio interview on 17 January, inspired by Donald Trump's election victory, Viktor Orbán said that his determined goal this year was to dismantle "the foreign networks threatening Hungarian sovereignty" and to send them home to America. The Prime Minister said that the most important foreign policy goal for 2025 is to oust the Soros empire from Europe and to take back the financial resources we are owed from Brussels. He pledged "to start on this here in Hungary" and said that "the spring will be all about this", i.e. about removing Western pressure. At that time, there was no mention yet of the fight against alleged Ukrainian influence.
What is clearly evident is that they are using the usual method to "present" the issue, about which nothing is known apart from Máté Kocsis' Facebook post. To date, Magyar Nemzet has been the most active on the subject. They have come up with several explanations concerning the potential objectives and motivation behind the alleged Ukrainian smear campaign. Magyar Nemzet interviewed László Földi, who served as a III/I officer (foreign intelligence service) during the communist era, after which he also served in the intelligence apparatus, and who nowadays works as an intelligence expert. He took things one step further and raised the stakes even higher when suggesting – again without any specifics – that the Ukrainian intelligence operation could also be aimed at influencing the 2026 parliamentary elections.
He predicted a dark future for Hungary if the alleged Ukrainian secret service operation should succeed. "We must not underestimate 2026. If the Orbán government loses the election next year and Viktor Orbán is no longer Hungary's prime minister, the country will be in a very difficult situation. In that case, Hungary could fall into the hands of those who have long coveted our land. So this is no small matter. The 2026 elections could decide the fate of Hungary." According to him, the Ukrainians have launched a smear campaign against Viktor Orbán because "the Orbán government has often prevented the crazy things the Ukrainians wanted to do".
In another article, the Director of Political Analysis at the pro-government Nézőpont Institute, Levente Boros Bánk, argued that although the exact details are unknown, the Hungarian intelligence services "presumably backed up the information with sufficient evidence". And since in recent years "many anti-government organisations or press products have obtained foreign funds from the most various places", they are "ready to accept these funds" at this time too. According to the Director of Political Analysis at Nézőpont, the reason why the operation has only now come to light is that the number of Ukraine's supporters is dwindling, (he brought the new US administration as an example) so "it is not surprising that the Ukrainian leadership is resorting to such means". However, he did not mention that Donald Trump recently threatened Russia with even harsher taxes, tariffs and sanctions than so far, and has recently said that he would not stop military and economic aid to Ukraine in exchange for its rare earths.
The end of bribes, a punch in the gut for the leftist liberals
The timing is indeed a crucial issue, as we do not know when the Hungarian secret services became aware of the alleged Ukrainian plot for a smear campaign, when and how the Ukrainians approached the Hungarian press – if indeed anything of the sort happened – and why the secret services chose to inform the Parliament’s National Security Committee at this particular time. Although we have no information about any of this, the government has certainly benefited from the supposed smear campaign against Orbán.This way, now that US President Donald Trump has issued a decree suspending US foreign aid for 90 days, they do not need to worry about the contradiction of how the 'dollar-funded media' continues to operate.
With this, the government's communication machinery has lost an important pillar, but it seems they have quickly found another threat to the country's sovereignty: with Trump in power, it is now not America, but Ukraine that is funding the press which is critical of the government. Tamás Menczer, Fidesz's communications director, spoke about this in his video of 4 February. “This is a difficult day for the liberal left! Donald Trump has put a stop to the rolling dollars. He put an end to the bribes, and punched the leftist liberals in the gut. I see that the traitors of their homeland are now clamouring for Ukrainian money, selling the homeland to Ukraine. I can promise you that we will defend Hungary against traitors and their foreign sponsors!”
All of this fits in perfectly with Fidesz's interpretation of the world that from now on it is not Joe Biden's America that must be hated, but Ukraine. The government, which calls itself 'pro-peace', has constantly implied that it is Ukraine, the country under attack, and not the aggressor Russia, that is the cause of all economic and political problems. Most recently, Prime Minister Orbán even blamed the Ukrainians for high petrol prices in Hungary, although he did have to resort to twisting some of the facts.
The pro-government press is also on board with this, and has on several occasions disseminated actual Russian war propaganda. In Origo's breaking news, Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a wise leader and Zelensky as an alcoholic liar, and in this same alternate universe, there are weekly “reports” that the Ukrainians have started and lost World War III. Just a few days ago, Origo, Mandiner and Magyar Nemzet all published pieces claiming that the Ukrainians wanted to attack Russia before the war broke out, i.e. that Putin started the war as a form of self-defence. This happens to be a popular theme in Russian propaganda and, as it turns out, the Hungarian pro-government press has managed to bend reality on this as well.
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