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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Ukraine on 2 July for the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion. The last time Viktor Orbán visited Ukraine was in 2015, and before that, in 2012, when Viktor Yanukovych was in office. Orbán was one of the few European leaders who refused to use the Ukrainian railway services during the war and traveled from Budapest to Kyiv in his own motorcade. The urgency of the Hungarian prime minister's visit can be explained by the fact that on 1 July, his country started its six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union and assumed responsibility for organizing the work of the body, which is one of the EU's key legislative institutions alongside the European Parliament. In addition to approving the EU budget, it negotiates on behalf of the EU and arranges agreements between EU member states and other countries or international organizations. It is important because on the eve of the official start of Ukraine's EU accession negotiations, announced on 25 June, Orbán reiterated that Hungary does not conceptually support Ukraine's accession to the EU: "Hungary does not agree with this accession process, but we are not blocking it, and we support the start of negotiations." On the sidelines of the EU leaders' summit in Brussels on 27 June, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Viktor Orbán had a brief emotional conversation, during which the two leaders might have agreed on the latter’s visit to Kyiv.
Orbán's visit to the Ukrainian capital did not go unnoticed by pro-Russian propaganda channels, which interpreted both the preconditions and the circumstances of this event in their own way. They also distorted or manipulated the words of politicians and the possible consequences that the visit could entail for the dynamics of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations and the course of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
"Orbán said what Zelenskyy is afraid to say"
Pro-Kremlin Telegram channels manipulated the subject of the Hungarian prime minister's visit to Kyiv, in particular by covering the event as "extremely inconvenient" for Zelenskyy. For example, one of the channels (with more than 415,000 subscribers) wrote that Orbán had insidiously touched the Ukrainian president's sore spot by raising the subject of a truce with Russia. It was after he had been welcomed in Kyiv, where Ukraine had agreed to fulfill a list of 11 conditions put forward by the Hungarian side as a precondition for the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU.
The purpose of this post, as well as several others published on the same channel, was not to criticize Orbán actions but to negate the diplomatic efforts of the Ukrainian authorities. Using quotes from Orbán's speech, the propagandists distorted them and added their own interpretations or manipulations, claiming to reflect what "millions of Ukrainians want to hear from their president" (the ceasefire – DM's note). According to them, once Ukraine agrees to a ceasefire, "the daily air raids will stop, the streets will be safe to walk on, the blackouts will end, and people will be able to return to work and demobilize."
It is a manipulation, if not an outright lie, that the blackouts will end immediately after Ukraine's unilateral ceasefire. The massive destruction of the energy infrastructure will take a long time to repair and was caused by Russian missile attacks (a fact that is not mentioned). This interpretation makes it seem as if the Ukrainian government is turning off the electricity on its own, and the power will magically reappear as soon as the "unilateral ceasefire" proposed by Orbán begins.
Another unfounded assumption is that there will be no air strikes. Russia's behavior is unpredictable, and even if Ukraine theoretically accepts Orbán's proposal for a first ceasefire and then continues negotiations, there are no guarantees or even promises from Russia. Russia could launch new attacks during the negotiations and even after agreeing to take steps to de-escalate the situation. On the contrary, the Russian army is trying to advance and exert pressure on all fronts. A case in point is what happened in 2015-2021 when OSCE representatives repeatedly recorded cases of the Ukrainian side withdrawing its equipment from the so-called demarcation line established after the Minsk talks, while the Russian side was in no hurry to do so.
Another Russian militarist propaganda channel (over 1 million subscribers) also tried to portray the Hungarian prime minister as a “dove of peace”, commenting on Viktor Orbán's recent remarks that war was imminent on the European continent and that only a change in the White House could stop it: “The European train is heading towards war, and now only Trump can stop the locomotive if he wins the election.” In fact, this refers to the Hungarian politician’s words spoken on a local radio station, Kossuth, about Hungary's refusal to participate in a possible future NATO mission (if any) to supply weapons, funds, or military specialists to Ukraine. However, this phrase ("the European train is heading for war") can only be found in Russian or Russian-language sources. The Telegram channel itself presents Orbán as a skillful politician who "negotiated the right of Hungarians not to take part in this gamble" (NATO's war with Russia – DM's note) but who is "deliberately stirring up fears" and tensions in Ukraine's relations with the EU and NATO to help Donald Trump in his election campaign. Allegedly, the Hungarian leader will do everything to oppose Western interference in the "Russian-Ukrainian conflict".
Some propaganda channels (over 60,000 subscribers) focused on discussing the details of the talks between Orbán and Zelenskyy in Kyiv and drifted toward conspiracy theories. They convinced their readers that the meeting was not about the 11 conditions Hungary had set for Ukraine on its way to European integration. Instead, it was supposedly about the battle for revenues from "the largest smuggling corridor between Asia, Russia, and Europe" and "revenues from illegal migration, drug trafficking, arms trafficking as well as illegal supply lines of Ukrainian timber and cigarettes to the EU through Hungary, with Mukachevo as the hub". According to the proposed theory, there is a "conspiracy between Yermak and the lackeys of George Soros against a common enemy – Viktor Orbán". At the same time, the redistribution of "spheres of influence" in Zakarpattia allegedly began after the death of the former head of the region, Hennadiy Moskal, in March 2023 and has now been resumed through the President's Office's alleged "attack on the clan of Viktor Baloha and his relatives". Orbán, for his part, proposed "11 steps to protect Zakarpattia", which, according to the channel's authors, are very similar to the so-called "10 guarantees for Crimeans" used by Russian propaganda in March 2014 to persuade Crimeans to take part in a pseudo-referendum. The conspiracy narrative (and fantasy) in the propagandists' messages does not stop there. They claim that Orbán's visit to Kyiv is a logical "step in the tacit agreements on the division of Ukraine between the EU and Russia".
In the end, however, the propagandists offered their subscribers the main punchline: they called upon the audience to consider "the difference between Hungarian- and Russian-speaking Ukrainians". By asking to restore the status of the Hungarian language in all spheres of life in the region, as well as to increase the representation of Hungarian-speaking Ukrainians in the legislature, Orbán allegedly raises a "fatal question for Kyiv" – here Russian propaganda resorted to its usual trope of saying that "if the rights and opinions of the population of the 'south-east' were recognized, there would be no separatism", transposing this thesis to Zakarpattia.
Leader of the pan-European “party of peace”
Following up on the thesis that “European countries must not interfere in the Russian-European conflict”, several small Telegram channels of the so-called Z network discussed Orbán’s initiative to create a new far-right bloc of parties in the European Parliament, a political group called Patriots for Europe, describing the Hungarian prime minister as “a true leader who will fix Europe”.
Other channels (the post received over 230,000 views) reported on the negotiations between Viktor Orbán and Marine Le Pen, whose party was leading in the French national elections. They convinced their subscribers that the union of Orbán and Le Pen's supporters in the European Parliament would lead to "the formation of a bloc of euro-pragmatists who will oppose the globalists in the EU". According to them, the central goal of this alliance in the European Parliament would be to change the course of European politics, which would "quickly bring peace to the continent".
Another anonymous Telegram channel commenting on the news (the post received more than 33,000 views) described the talks between Orbán and Le Pen as an "alliance of the reasonable", but wryly warned its readers that very soon, "all those who are reasonable and pragmatic will be called 'agents of the Kremlin' and included in the 'Myrotvorets' database". Such messages are intended to give readers the impression of Viktor Orbán's growing political weight in Europe as if he were on the verge of leading a powerful new political project as an 'alternative to the bureaucrats in Brussels' – as well as to portray Orbán's opponents, critics or detractors as unreasonable.
These articles fail to mention that Orbán's Fidesz party lost a significant share of the Hungarian vote in the last European Parliament elections, winning only 11 of Hungary’s 21 seats in the institution. Moreover, the largest political group in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), has expelled Orbán’s representatives from its ranks and is interested in cooperating with the party of his opponent, Péter Magyar. So far, Orbán’s initiative has been limited to the Patriotic Manifesto, signed only by former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and the leader of the Austrian Freedom Party, Herbert Kieckl. To form a political group in the European Parliament, at least seven countries must be represented, so Orban must find supporters from at least four other EU countries. The Hungarian prime minister will not stop trying to create a fake pan-European "peace party", just as Russian propaganda will not stop trying to cover all his initiatives, as Detector Media has already suggested in its article on the results of the European Parliament elections.
Orbán’s visit to Kyiv can be regarded as an attempt to break out of his isolation within the EU while serving as president of the EU Council, the body partly responsible for international policy. However, it is unlikely that one visit will improve his reputation as the most Kremlin-friendly leader in the European bloc, a position with which only a few marginal figures are willing to align themselves, as the recent European Parliament elections have shown.
While the Hungarian Prime Minister was meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó held an almost simultaneous phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. According to a later report by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the call was initiated by the Hungarian side, and during the conversation, the parties “stressed the need for Kyiv to unconditionally secure the rights of all ethnic minorities living in the country”. Several anonymous Telegram channels (over 150,000 subscribers) targeting Ukrainian audiences within the social network called it a gesture that showed “Hungary being on the right side”.
Some Russian political experts went even further and expressed their dissatisfaction with Viktor Orbán's visit to Kyiv. Sergei Markov, for example, wrote on his Telegram channel that with his proposal, the Hungarian prime minister was advocating for a "Korean scenario", which is allegedly gaining more and more supporters in the world (according to this interpretation, it means an indefinite freezing of the line of contact). Yet, the former Kremlin adviser was quick to add that this is not even an option that Moscow is happy with: "During this ceasefire, NATO will once again flood the Ukrainian regime with weapons, and in a year, the war will break out, even more, violent and bloody than before". Such statements can ultimately mean only one thing: Russia, despite the efforts of European leaders of all stripes, is determined to continue the confrontation, in which it will try to use every opportunity for a pause, disguised as a sham ceasefire, just to replenish its troops and restore its offensive capabilities.
Although Ukraine initially confirmed through Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, that it had received 11 conditions from Hungary regarding the rights of national minorities, it later reaffirmed the flexibility and consistency of its negotiating position in a statement by Foreign Minister Kuleba. "During the visit, President Zelenskyy had a frank but constructive exchange of views with Prime Minister Orbán on a just peace, not just a ceasefire or peace talks," the minister said. To a certain extent, given its dependence on Western weapons systems and financial resources and its constant shortage, Ukraine cannot choose any other model than that of working with everyone and trying to solve all problems. However, it can only do so without forgetting its principles and the just peace framework outlined during the preparation and holding of the Peace Summit, which is being promoted by Ukrainian diplomats worldwide.
Main page illustration and infographic credits: Natalia Lobach
