Viktor Orbán stated that Ukraine is not an added value to the community, but a liability.Continue reading
A Hungarian opposition party has played an active role in a Ukrainian secret service operation, something that has never happened before in living memory, Viktor Orbán claimed in a video posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
In a video recorded after a meeting of the Defense Council, the Prime Minister said he had convened the council because an unprecedented secret service attack has been launched against Hungary in recent days.
Ukraine launched a coordinated smear campaign against Hungary in order to undermine our initiative to hold a referendum on EU membership,”
he explained.
️ @PM_ViktorOrban: A Ukrainian intelligence operation, aided by a Hungarian opposition party, has targeted our Defense Forces to block Hungary’s EU vote on Ukraine. This is unprecedented. We will go through with the opinion vote, Brussels and Kyiv will not decide over the heads… pic.twitter.com/3suG0IO1oA
— Zoltan Kovacs (@zoltanspox) May 13, 2025
Mr. Orbán announced that at the Defense Council meeting, it also emerged that the Ukrainians had allegedly revived their contacts in Hungary in order to carry out the operation, and with the help of a Hungarian party, launched an attack against the Hungarian Defense Forces. “This means that a Hungarian opposition party has taken an active role in a Ukrainian secret service operation, something that has never happened before in living memory,” the Prime Minister emphasized.
The Prime Minister added that further secret service operations will probably be launched before the end of the referendum and the Hungarian services are prepared for this. “We will see the referendum through to the end, because neither Brussels nor Kyiv can decide over the heads of the Hungarian people,” Orbán underlined.
Hungarian-Ukrainian relations have already been shaky in the last few days.
Last Friday, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced that Hungary expelled two Ukrainian spies working under diplomatic cover at the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest, as the government will no longer tolerate Kyiv’s continuous discrediting actions against Hungary.
The Hungarian government’s move came after Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) uncovered an alleged Hungarian military intelligence network spying in western Ukraine — the first such case in the country’s history, Kyiv Post, a publication close to the Zelenskyy regime, reported. These persons were supposedly gathering data on Zakarpattia’s military defenses, looked for vulnerabilities, and analyzed how locals might react if Hungarian troops entered the region, claimed the Ukrainian paper. Two people were detained.
Following the events, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade canceled the Hungarian-Ukrainian expert meeting on Hungarian minority rights in Transcarpathia scheduled for May 12.
Levente Magyar recalled that on April 29, he held talks with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanishyna in Budapest with the aim of giving new impetus to the series of bilateral negotiations aimed at settling the native language rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, which had stalled in the previous months. At the meeting, they agreed to resume work at an expert level on May 12, he noted. However, he added, the Monday meeting was canceled on Saturday evening because he considered that the events of the past few days in Hungarian-Ukrainian relations do not allow for a good-faith, constructive discussion on such an important and sensitive issue as minority rights.
Hungary Today‘s staff have observed a large amount of disinformation and fake videos arriving at its social media feed, mostly on X, that purportedly show Hungarian troop and military equipment movements near the borders with Ukraine. Some of these have been posted from Hungarian-language accounts with thousands of followers, even though the ownership of these accounts cannot be verified. This opens the possibility of the participation of Hungarian opposition sympathizers, but currently direct links to the opposition Tisza Party cannot be established until evidence is presented to the contrary. Foreign media have also reposted these fake reports, with some even suggesting that there are ongoing preparations for an invasion of Transcarpathia, Western Ukraine. These reports are blatantly false, there are no revisionist political movements in Hungary calling for the return of Hungarian territories lost after World War I. The campaign is rather an attempt to discredit the Orbán government through Ukrainian proxy-agents, although the initiator and main beneficiary of these provocations is likely to be based outside of Ukraine’s borders.
Featured photo via MTI/Miniszterelnöki Sajtóiroda/Fischer Zoltán