Orbán: From dissident to Putin’s Hungarian boyar

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. 

If Russian President Vladimir Putin ever decided to invade European countries other than Ukraine, there’s one he wouldn’t need to bother with — Hungary. After all, he has a reliable ally or, as some would say, quisling in power in Budapest already.

Hungary had barely eased its way into its six-month stint in the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU before Prime Minister Viktor Orbán flew off on a so-called “peace mission.” Dropping by Kyiv, he pressed his unsolicited counsel on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urging him to agree to an immediate cease-fire with Russia.

Next, he was in Moscow for another chummy get-together with Putin, sorrowfully echoing the Russian leader’s narrative that Europe was warmongering; and from there to Beijing for the catnip of Chinese gratitude and, no doubt, more investment goodies. “The number of countries that can talk to both warring sides is diminishing,” Orbán said. “Hungary is slowly becoming the only country in Europe that can speak to everyone.”

Really? Most EU members want nothing to do with Putin’s Hungarian boyar — and made clear he certainly wasn’t speaking for them in Kyiv, Moscow or Beijing. The only apt comparison for Orbán’s self-proclaimed “peace mission 3.0” is Benito Mussolini’s generous offers to arbitrate peace negotiations between Adolf Hitler — his partner in the Pact of Steel — and Britain and France in 1939.

Il Duce had asked his foreign minister — and son-in-law — Count Galeazzo Ciano to lead the farcical effort, as Britain and France were given a fait accompli and lectured sternly about how “real peace” wouldn’t be possible if they insisted on Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland regaining independence.

True, Orbán may not have gone quite so as far as to offer a take-it-or-leave-it proposal of territory-for-peace, but he also made no effort to distance himself from Putin’s post-meeting statement, reiterating the Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine withdraw all its forces from the four eastern regions Russia claims to have annexed in 2022 as a condition for any peace talks.

When it comes to Orbán, ironies pile on ironies. This is the Hungarian leader who made his name as a young anti-Communist dissident, delivering a fiery anti-Russian speech at the 1989 reburial of Imre Nagy — the leader of the 1956 Hungarian revolt against the Soviets. But who says a leopard can’t change its spots?

Since 2008, Orbán has morphed from a libertarian firebrand into a Russia-aligned national conservative and illiberal, the Hungarian uprising’s brutal repression apparently now fully forgiven and forgotten. In 2019, the onetime dissident even happily welcomed Nikolai Kosov — the son of a KGB officer who was dispatched to help quash the Nagy-led revolt — to discuss the relocation of a Russian bank, itself steeped in Cold War history.

Dropping by Kyiv, Viktor Orbán pressed his unsolicited counsel on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urging him to agree to an immediate cease-fire with Russia. | Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images

However, some of Orbán’s former British Thatcherite advisers have long argued he’s no Russia-minded autocrat, rather a much misunderstood buccaneering provocateur. In a foreword to a collection of essays on Orbán, John O’Sullivan — a former adviser to ex-U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and founder of the Budapest-based Danube Institute — wrote: “He is intellectually adventurous. He gets bored by having to stick to the same political ‘line’ day after day. He wants to explore new ideas. He is prepared to take some risks in doing so. He likes spontaneity. He speculates in public. And, of course, he gets into trouble.”

But much to the contrary, Orbán’s political alignment with Russia and China has been pretty consistent for nearly two decades now — in for a penny, in for a pound.

In May, for example, Orbán welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping in Budapest to sign nearly two dozen agreements to deepen economic and cultural cooperation. During a press briefing that followed the talks, Orbán praised the “continuous, uninterrupted friendship” between the two countries since his tenure began in 2010, and he promised that Hungary would continue to host further Chinese investments — three-quarters of investments in Hungary last year came from China.

The prime minister has also made clear that Hungary will continue to get most of its energy supplies from Russia. While Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs Péter Szijjártó was in St. Petersburg for an economic forum boycotted by other Western leaders in June, he said Hungary had no plans to stop purchasing natural gas from Moscow despite pressure from Washington and Brussels.

It’s easy to see that Orbán is no modern-day Ferenc Szálas — the military officer who headed Hungary’s government during its occupation by Nazi Germany in World War II. Putin would have no need to actually occupy Hungary; it’s all being offered on a plate.

Orbán’s spoof peace mission is all part of a treacherous tapestry woven in Moscow, Beijing and Budapest, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time — on the eve of the NATO summit, and with Ukraine ensnared in a fiscal crunch,  negotiating with sovereign and multilateral creditors about old debt obligations for which repayments are set to resume in August.

Even before the result of the French elections, it was clear that France’s reliability as a Ukraine ally would likely be compromised. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the increasing likelihood of former President Donald Trump’s reelection is causing growing alarm as the dynamics of Western support are on the cusp of changing.

So, Orbán’s trip can really only be seen as one calibrated for maximum effect, aimed at sowing further corrosive doubt. And its grotesqueness has only been further underscored by the massive missile and rocket strikes Russia unleashed on cities across Ukraine, which included a hit on a children’s hospital in Kyiv.