A country that “never existed” or a “problem called Ukraine”: Hungary’s government and affiliated media have attacked their war-torn neighbor with increased pace since Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s “dear friend” Donald Trump took power.
Orban and his allies have long used the same “hostile narratives” against the West and Ukraine as Russia, Dorka Takacsy, a research fellow at the Budapest-based Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy (CEID) think tank told AFP.
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But the government – a close EU ally of Washington under Trump and the Kremlin – is more emboldened since the election of the US Republican.
“It seems Hungarian leadership saw Trump’s victory as an opportunity to do whatever they want with Ukraine,” Takacsy said, noting the number of anti-Kyiv messages from Orban and his allies has increased lately.
Trump last month called Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president since 2019, a “dictator” for not holding elections, even though martial law precludes any vote because of the war.
Amid a rush of online disinformation targeting Ukraine, here are some key Hungarian statements:
West provoked Russia into war
Orban regularly breaks EU unity on Ukraine, to which he has refused to send arms since Russia invaded in 2022, while slamming EU sanctions on Moscow.
In his weekly radio address on Friday, he warned again EU membership of Ukraine would “ruin” the bloc.
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The nationalist leader also did not join EU leaders, shaken by the prospect of US disengagement, in signing a text on Thursday in support of Ukraine.
In late February, Orban blamed the West for provoking Moscow into the conflict.
“The war is not really about Ukraine, it is about the fact that the territory called Ukraine – which has been a buffer zone, a buffer state, between NATO and Russia – should be brought under the auspices of NATO,” Orban said in his annual state of the nation address.
“Why European and American liberals thought that the Russians would stand idly by and watch this, is still a mystery,” he added.
Trump has blamed Ukraine over the war, saying “you should have never started it.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, with Russia occupying almost 20% of the country’s territory.
‘Never existed’
Echoing a narrative often employed by Putin, Hungary’s parliamentary speaker Laszlo Kover this week said Ukraine was a “country that actually has never existed in history.”
“It has no real political history, no real political elite, no tradition of governance,” the ultraconservative politician and Orban ally said in a Tuesday radio interview, adding that only those remain “who are incapable of defending themselves and those who have unscrupulously exploited the weaker.”
Ukraine, in its modern incarnation, is a nation of more than 40 million people, and has had a series of elected leaders since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Top Orban aide Balazs Orban – who has the same last name as the premier but is not related to him – in a Facebook post on Monday referred to the neighboring country as a “problem called Ukraine” that now “must be dealt with by the pro-war Europeans.”
Hungary’s pro-government newspaper Magyar Nemzet published opinion pieces, calling Ukraine a “rotten mafia monster state” and referred to the killings in Bucha – where Russian forces are accused of slaying hundreds of civilians – as “false flag theatrics”.
A 2022 UN Human Rights report said Russian forces killed civilians in Bucha and other cities.
AFP reporters were among international journalists to document bodies in the streets of Bucha, including some with their hands tied.
‘Bought’ celebrities
Hungary’s nationalist premier has also referenced in interviews conspiracy narratives about a “global left-wing network” having supposedly “bought” journalists and even US celebrities to boost Zelensky’s popularity.
“Hollywood stars were paid to go to Kyiv. They paid them millions of dollars,” Orban said in a recent interview with state radio.
The Hungarian government did not respond to AFP’s inquiry about the source of the allegation.
The claim may originate from a debunked video, purported to be from the US entertainment show E! News, which was shared by Elon Musk and prominent American conservatives.
It alleged without proof that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) “sponsored American celebrity visits to Ukraine... to increase Zelensky’s popularity among foreign audiences, particularly in the United States.”
Russian state media often quotes Orban’s remarks on Ukraine at length, according to Takacsy.
Orban “paints the same picture of the world that the Kremlin’s domestic propaganda would like to suggest... If they can quote the same criticisms of the West, the same accusations, from the mouth of an outsider, it gives extra credibility to the same criticisms,” the researcher said.
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