Russia expert: We know of at least three Russian government-affiliated organizations that are interfering in the Hungarian elections

The 2022 parliamentary election was an exception because it was held about six weeks after the war broke out in Ukraine and at that time, foreign policy was understandably a major issue. In the current election, the chant "Russians, go home!" became a hot topic in foreign policy after the transcripts of the Szijjártó–Lavrov and Orbán–Putin phone calls were made public, András Rácz, Russia expert, said on Telex’s live broadcast. He said he was genuinely surprised that this chant even came up at Friday's "System-Breaking Grand Concert," on graffiti in the streets, and on social media, but he was pleased by it.

In his view, this indicates that awareness regarding foreign policy is growing in Hungarian society. “It is no longer possible to convince society—or at least a significant portion of it—that it is normal for, say, the foreign minister to report to the Russian foreign minister in real time about what is happening at a closed-door EU meeting, or for the Hungarian prime minister to do Putin’s bidding,” he said.

According to him, the release of the wiretaps means that the Orbán government has completely lost its credibility within our alliance system, the EU, and NATO. Péter Szijjártó is right in saying that these are obviously attempts by intelligence services to influence events, but if you “undermine the alliance systems of which you are a member” and do so for the benefit of an actor who is waging a hybrid war against these alliances, then there is no reason to be surprised, he said.

From Russia’s perspective, the current Hungarian government is an exceptionally important partner because it is their most effective tool for influencing the EU and NATO. There has been an EU government like this before, Rácz noted, referring to the Austrian Freedom Party, which failed in this role; however, as he pointed out, that government was not in power for 16 years, and Austria is not a member of NATO, so the Orbán government is a much more important partner for the Russians than the Austrian one was.

According to Rácz, it was a new element of the Hungarian campaign that Russia and the Hungarian government were conducting joint information operations. He cited, among other examples, the release of the ethnic Hungarian Ukrainian prisoners of war and after the capture of the Ukrainian money transport, the incorporation of AI videos produced in Russia into Hungarian government propaganda.

“We know of at least three Russian government agencies, or agencies close to the government that have interfered or are interfering in the Hungarian elections,”

one of these is the foreign intelligence service, the SVR, which, according to a leaked document, planned some sort of false-flag attack or staged attack targeting Orbán. Then there is the military intelligence, the GU (formerly the GRU), whose task is to assist the work of the Hungarian government media. And the third is Sergei Kiriyenko’s organization, which supports the government’s social media campaign. who are tasked with assisting and supporting the work of the Hungarian government media.

According to the Russia expert, the government’s silence on this matter is shocking, considering that we haven't been finding out about these influencing attempts “from our own government agencies and national security bodies, but from the foreign press.” We haven’t even heard anything from the minister overseeing the intelligence services about whether this is true or not, said Rácz, who believes that it will only become clear after the election whether the claim that Hungarian society has become immune to such attempts after 16 years of government disinformation campaigns is valid.

In relation to the disclosure of the conversations between Péter Szijjártó and Sergey Lavrov, he said, “The fact that my own country’s foreign minister has been sharing confidential EU information with the Russian foreign minister practically in real time—and, moreover, doing so in such an unprepared manner that he is using an open phone line, and the fact that this has been going on for years (…)—is appalling to see. He believes that there has never been a foreign minister in Hungarian history—in the history of independent Hungary—who has been this close to Moscow.

“Hungarian foreign policy had more autonomy even during the Kádár era.”

In his view, even if Fidesz remains in power, Szijjártó’s foreign policy career will still come to an end, because the allies have made it clear that they no longer trust him. “It would be very strange if he were still able to participate in European Council or NATO meetings after this,” he said. According to Rácz, the Hungarian Criminal Code includes the crime of espionage against EU institutions.

According to Rácz, it was abundantly clear during the current campaign that Russian disinformation had infiltrated the government-controlled media, particularly Russian disinformation about Ukraine, whose volume and visibility had increased manyfold. The narrative about the Ukrainian oil blockade clearly favors the Russians, Rácz said on Telex’s live broadcast.

“I know for a fact that the Hungarian government is aware of the actual condition of the Druzhba oil pipeline; they know full well that the pipeline has been severely damaged and that it will take months to repair.”

In his view, the narrative about an oil blockade is unfoundedly fueling anti-Ukrainian hysteria, which benefits no one, and it is based on this that the government has decided not to approve the 90 billion euro EU loan, which would be extremely important for Ukraine to be able to defend itself in this war.

When asked about reports in pro-government media outlets such as Origo and Index claiming that Tisza is preparing for acts of violence on election day, Rácz said he feels fortunate that he doesn't have to read Hungarian propaganda; reading Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian media is more than enough for him. “For weeks now, the Hungarian government's media has been building up the narrative that some kind of violent unrest is expected on election night, that some kind of Ukrainian provocation is expected.”

According to the analyst, they have failed to answer the question of “why this would actually be good for the Ukrainians.” Rácz argues that the government-controlled media has constructed a “superhero image” for Ukraine, but “there is no rational explanation for why Ukraine would risk interfering in the electoral process on the territory of the EU and a NATO member state.” “That would require the entire leadership in Kyiv to have collectively lost their minds, but it doesn’t really look like that’s happened.”

“They have obviously been laying the groundwork for a narrative that if violent acts occur tonight, tomorrow night, or in the next few days, then the narrative will already be in place that Ukraine can be blamed for this, regardless of whether it is justified or not,” he said.

According to the expert, in information warfare, one can see a pattern where they first build up the narrative, upon which actual physical action can then be built. “They’ve even started naming the targets,” he said. In his view, given the current situation, it would be impossible to bring people capable of carrying out such an operation from Ukraine, but they could be brought in from Russia; and theoretically, it wouldn’t even be a problem to bring in provocateurs who speak Ukrainian.

“Let’s not forget that when the Yanukovych regime collapsed in the spring of 2014, thousands of members of the former Yanukovych riot police—an incredibly brutal unit—fled to Russia or defected to the separatists,” he said. According to the expert, unrest is possible if the government wins the election, but by a very narrow margin—for example, due to the distortions in the electoral system—and the opposition begins to protest in response, because according to previously published opinion polls, such a scenario was not anticipated.

If this opposition protest were to drag on, Rácz believes it would be difficult to keep it under control for long due to the lack of police resources. In his view, the only way the government could break up the protests in such a scenario would be to send in provocateurs, allowing the police to intervene on that pretext—which is what happened during the Moldovan elections in April 2009, he noted.

Rácz sincerely hopes this will not happen, if only because the police have acted very fairly so far during the election. “The Budapest Police Headquarters and the officers deployed from out of town have performed exceptionally well during the election campaign so far,” as we saw at Friday’s System-Breaking Grand Concert, which drew hundreds of thousands of participants.

Regarding the incident involving the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in Serbia, he said that it was “so transparent from the very beginning,” and he thought they couldn’t be so foolish as to carry it out after he had written about this rumour in the form of a story days earlier. He found it very interesting that the Serbian plan changed along the way, and then “Serbia backed out of this story pretty quickly.” In his view, so far this resemebled the most a potential false-flag operation.

He noted that since the change of regime, there has never been a case where anyone could have justifiably questioned the work of the National Election Office and the tens of thousands of people involved in conducting the electoral process. He believes that Fidesz’s so-called “democracy centers,” which monitor election fraud, are undermining confidence in national institutions, and he considers this deeply irresponsible. In his view, this initiative is akin to the “Communists for Democracy” faction during the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the “Wolves for Vegetarianism.”

He argues that the ruling party saying that if there are irregularities, one should not trust the authorities is encouraging people not to trust the proven, reliable authorities but rather a political party—which is simply illogical; “this is the definition of a party state.” When asked whether he thought Fidesz might refuse to accept the final results in the event of an election defeat by citing fraud, he said, “It’s quite sad that I have to say this, but I can’t rule it out, and that’s a problem,” though he sincerely hopes it won’t come to that.