Facing a real chance of defeat in the April parliamentary elections, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban can’t stop talking about President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine.

Just in the past few weeks, the Hungarian strongman called the war-torn country an “enemy” and accused its leadership of blackmail, deception, and election interference. Orban even deployed troops to defend Hungary’s energy infrastructure against a claimed Ukrainian threat.

Hungary’s leader is “desperately losing” his pre-election fight, Pavel Havlicek, a research fellow at the Association for International Affairs in Prague, told the Kyiv Independent.

To avert defeat, he is “picking external fights,” seeking to mobilize Hungarian voters against Ukraine while also pointing the finger at the domestic political opposition, the expert says.

MBFC
Archive

    • monkeyFromTheLake@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Fortunately Hungarians are by high margin pro EU. But Orban had many years to change all sorts of policies to favour him in elections. He basically owns Hungary’s media landscape, gerrymandered election districts, suppressed visibility of opposition where possible and I don’t know what not. So even if the situation looks dire for him I am not confident that he will loose the election. One can only hope that Hungarians, with vast majority, vote for someone else than he.