The one most satisfied with the position of the Hungarian prime minister in the period after 2024 is, of course, the Kremlin ruler. But Viktor Orbán expanded his influence toward Washington and Beijing as well—yet “you cannot carry three watermelons under one arm.” In fact, not even two. Orbán also created a spy affair, but got away with it like Richard Nixon did in Watergate scandal. Will he end up like the Republican president in 1974? He, too, was advised by Israeli consultants—the very same ones…
By Ljubomir Kostovski
Continuation of: Find Yourself a Good Enemy!
In recent years, we have seen that the new enemy of Viktor Orbán is Ukraine—the very country that is fighting for its independence with great effort. Although his adviser, George Birnbaum, formally left Hungary in 2015 and had no new contract with Orbán, they continued to communicate precisely on matters concerning the Hungarian prime minister’s eastern neighbor. Namely, Birnbaum’s wife is Ukrainian, and the couple often stayed in Kyiv (!)—but in different circumstances, visiting the mayor Vitali Klitschko.
The man who helped create Benjamin Netanyahu and propelled Orbán into the political orbit—Birnbaum—now, in his latest statements, defends the struggle led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy together with the Klitschko brothers (Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko). Yet Orbán, as stated in the introduction to this series, needed a new enemy. And as a fighter against Kyiv, he gains new friends around him—one might say geographically both below and above. He even remains part of the “bulwark” that the right is building precisely in those Eastern European countries that were once part of the Warsaw Pact.
Undoubtedly, he is also ideologically close to Vladimir Putin, who claims that liberalism has become obsolete. The Russian leader misses no opportunity to protest against what he sees as the decadence of the liberal West, multiculturalism, immigration, and human rights. Perhaps also because of this context, and as a resident of the United States, Birnbaum is today a man who believes that Orbán has been in power for too long—if he is to be believed.
There is no doubt that Orbán has not abandoned carrying the banner of anti-Muslim rhetoric, but in the meantime, he has tightly fastened around himself the belt of Putinism.
In January 2015, let us recall, the Hungarian prime minister stated that “every migrant is a potential terrorist.” By July 2022, he was telling his supporters that “we are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become a mixed-race people.”
His main supporter and paid adviser, George Birnbaum, strongly disagrees with both statements. But now, after thoroughly exhausting the anti-Muslim matrix during the second and third terms! Formally, this paid architect of strategies no longer has a contract, and is now free to interpret differently what he once encouraged the Hungarian prime minister to do. He called for polarization in politics, yet now does not offer the antidote to that very practice.
“The best kind of leaders are those who remind us of our common goals, not our differences. It is not about ideology, but about ensuring that people’s hopes and dreams are fulfilled,” Birnbaum told a BBC journalist.
Orbán’s method of creating a friend in Russia and an enemy in Ukraine—intended to renew his mandate for a fifth term, following Birnbaum’s mantra that it is good to have a powerful enemy—began as a supposed attempt to calm the war between Moscow and Kyiv!? How transparent an attempt to justify his contacts with an aggressor that is effectively at war with the Union and with NATO!
In July 2024, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, announced that he would hold several uncoordinated meetings, which he called “peace missions.” He visited the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Kyiv, before traveling to Moscow to meet the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, after which he went to Beijing to meet the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and President of China, Xi Jinping. He then traveled to the United States to attend the 2024 summit in Washington and to meet the President of the United States, Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago. The meetings took place amid heightened tensions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while China was strengthening its diplomatic ties with Russia in the context of economic sanctions imposed by the EU and the United States.
TALKS IN MOSCOW IN THE NAME OF THE EU – WITHOUT BRUSSELS’ SUPPORT!
The visit to Russia was significant in geopolitical terms because it was carried out without any official approval or mandate from the leadership in Brussels, despite Vladimir Putin claiming that Viktor Orbán was representing the European Union.
This led to condemnation from several EU national leaders and from the government of Ukraine, with many describing the meetings as “appeasement” toward the aggressor side in the war. It also raised concern among EU leaders that Orbán was attempting to use his position in the presidency of the Council of the European Union to speak on its behalf in order to pursue personal goals that run counter to the bloc’s policies and values.
The sequence of visits took place after Hungary assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1, when Orbán expressed his intention to use the position to embark on a “peace mission” aimed at ending the Russia–Ukraine war.
Otherwise, the previous visit by an EU leader to Russia had taken place in April 2022, by Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. The meeting between Orbán and Putin also followed an earlier meeting in Beijing in October 2023, where possible cooperation in the energy sector was discussed. The outcome of that meeting, incidentally, still heats Hungarian homes today—of course under more favorable conditions.
The meeting between Orbán and Putin—effectively their second—took place in Moscow on July 5, 2024, and lasted several hours. It was not disclosed to any EU member state until just before it began. Orbán reportedly asked Putin whether a ceasefire could precede peace negotiations. In response, Putin rejected the idea, stating that it would allow Ukraine “to recover losses, regroup, and rearm.” Putin insisted that Ukraine should withdraw its forces from the four regions (provinces) that Russia claimed to have annexed in 2022 (including territory it does not fully control), but this withdrawal was rejected by Ukraine.
Putin stated that the two had also discussed Russia–European Union relations, which are now “at their lowest point.” Orbán said he had asked Putin three questions: his views on current peace plans, his thoughts on potential peace talks and ceasefire proposals, and his views on the “post-war European security architecture.” Orbán did not provide any details on how Putin responded to these questions.
The EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, had to react by stating that Orbán had no mandate from the Union for any form of diplomacy and that during the trip to Moscow he did not “represent the Union in full capacity.” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas described the visit as “confusing.”
An open confrontation between Brussels and Budapest began to intensify, while Moscow increasingly offered flattering comments toward Orbán. Putin highlighted his “fair approach,” which, of course, irritated the centers of power within the EU and NATO that were making strong efforts to find an effective response to defend Ukraine under attack.
In interviews for the Swiss Weltwoche, Orbán described the EU as a “bureaucratic nonsense,” and for Bild he stated: “Believe me: the next two or three months will be far more brutal than we think. More weapons will be used, and the Russians are increasingly determined. Energy will be part of the confrontation, the number of casualties will rise, and the fighting will become more brutal than in the past seven months.”
THREE WATERMELONS UNDER ONE ARM
The overall outcome of Orbán’s six-month presidency of the EU showed that, without any preparation, he set off for Moscow at the very beginning and effectively launched his role as a “Trojan horse” in EU policies toward Russia as an aggressor and a threat to peace and borders on the Old Continent. In practice, halfway through his third term as prime minister, he had already chosen a new ally, fully aware that Ukraine would justifiably react sharply to all his moves, which he presented as clumsy, yet carried out with “good intentions,” at the most sensitive point in Europe.
Conversely, Vladimir Putin certainly needed someone who would undermine the Union, since it remained his only real adversary, especially as NATO was gradually adjusting to Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the joint effort.
Moreover, Viktor Orbán began to veto all forms of assistance to Ukraine, while firmly positioning himself at the center of the Bratislava–Belgrade–Skopje axis (to which one might add Port of Piraeus, a major port under Chinese ownership), securing side support from Beijing, where he also traveled at the very start of his EU presidency. In practice, he secured for himself a privileged position in Beijing as well—the new second global power.
At one point, he found himself backed by the three largest power centers, something few have managed to achieve. In this regard (especially concerning Washington), one cannot overlook the role of Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisory networks. At the same time, Belgrade turned into a new intelligence and training hub for Israeli covert plans in the Balkans, as part of a broader regional environment—relevant, of course, for our country as well.
What is unusual is that this “broad reach” of Orbán’s foreign policy across the entire strategic landscape diluted his position at home. The notion that it is beneficial to have only one major enemy—Ukraine—while relying on support from three major global powers produced the opposite effect. He let their “gifts” slip, as the old wisdom says: “you cannot carry two watermelons under one arm.” In this case, there were three—and all are bound to slip, with a potentially fatal fall to the ground.
The beginning of that crash came much earlier. It seems to lie in the scheduled meeting between German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and her Hungarian counterpart Péter Szijjártó on July 6, 2024. More precisely, the planned visit of Baerbock to Budapest for that Monday was canceled due to “technical” and “non-political” reasons, according to the Foreign Ministry, as reported by Világgazdaság. Simply put, Baerbock wanted to clarify all the inconsistencies in Orbán’s actions carried out in the name of the EU, while he, seeking to preserve his “comfortable position within the Union’s hierarchy,” aimed to act from that position for as long as possible.
According to the statement, Hungary requested a postponement of the visit due to unforeseen changes in Szijjártó’s schedule, but expressed hope that the meeting could be rescheduled soon. Earlier, the German Foreign Ministry had expressed dissatisfaction with the delay, stating that “a serious and honest discussion is needed after the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán met with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” as reported by Reuters.
Other details of that conflict are known, but developments do not follow a one-way path that would suggest Orbán is the “master of the situation.” The breaking point in EU–Hungary relations came with the exposure of the spying affair dubbed the “Hungarian Watergate.” The comparison to the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon (a long-time client of Israeli consultants) lies in the fact that Orbán’s intelligence service allegedly attempted to compromise the opposition Tisza Party under the pretext of combating “Ukrainian spies in the country.”
Hungary’s Constitutional Protection Office (Alkotmányvédelmi Hivatal, abbreviated AH)—one of the five intelligence services in the country (what a police state!)—allegedly infiltrated the Tisza Party in order to prevent it from participating in the elections or at least significantly reduce its chances. The service reportedly tried to recruit computer scientists managing the party’s IT system in order to obtain internal data and use it for manipulation. This took place earlier, nine months prior, in July 2025. At that time, it was already clear that the Tisza Party—which, according to polls, still holds a significant lead over the ruling Fidesz of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for April 12—posed a serious threat to the ruling system.
There is no evidence that Orbán personally ordered the operation, but it is unlikely that he was unaware of it. The Constitutional Protection Office is directly subordinate to the Prime Minister’s Office and is overseen by the head of the Cabinet, Antal Rogán.
FABRICATED SUSPICION
The entire case was triggered by an article published by the investigative outlet Direkt36 on Tuesday, March 24 this year. A video interview was also published on their YouTube channel. In it, Bence Szabó, a senior official at the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI), describes the case in detail over the course of nearly an hour and a half.
Szabó had been the lead investigator in the Department for Online Child Pornography. After the interview was published, he resigned and was subsequently suspended. According to him, in July 2025, his unit came under pressure from the Constitutional Protection Office to launch an investigation into alleged child pornography and to seize computer equipment from two individuals.
It soon became clear that they had no connection whatsoever to such crimes, but were instead responsible for managing the IT system of the Tisza Party. The background of the operation appears to be that the service had previously unsuccessfully attempted to recruit these computer scientists, and therefore feared being exposed. At the same time, it evidently sought access to the party’s data. After the equipment was seized, the data was indeed copied—likely without any legal basis.
In the autumn of 2025, a major incident occurred: data from the Tisza Party’s application was leaked, including around 200,000 personal records of its supporters. The government and the ruling Fidesz then blamed Ukraine, claiming that the application had been developed by Ukrainian IT experts. It now appears that manipulation by the state apparatus itself may have been behind it all.
The testimony of Szabó mentioned above had been viewed by around 2.77 million people at the time of writing. Investigative journalist András Pethő warns that the case raises serious questions about the independence and political neutrality of Hungarian institutions.
Political scientist Miklós Sik Endre compares the current situation to the end of the dictatorship in Hungary in 1989–1990 and concludes that, at that time, the government did not use secret services against the opposition to stay in power—whereas today, according to him, Orbán’s Fidesz shows it is not prepared for a democratic transfer of power.
In an attempt at defense, the government tried to portray one of the accused as a Ukrainian spy. But—as people from Ohrid would say—“they ran out of evidence.” Meanwhile, proceedings were initiated against investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, who had written about Russian–Hungarian relations, also accusing him of being a “Ukrainian spy.” He says these claims are absurd.
Among the opposition-minded segment of Hungarian voters, Szabó is being celebrated as a hero. Even the leader of the Tisza Party stated that if “a single hair is missing from his head,” the people will not wait for elections—but will rise up.
Viktor Orbán has not commented directly on these affairs. However, in one statement he called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “withdraw his agents”—without offering any explanation. Finally, speaking at a meeting on March 29, 2026, he issued a stark warning: “I still have a few bullets left in the magazine that I can use.”
Coming next:
What Orbán used one week before the elections—and what the opposition uncovered ahead of Sunday’s vote
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Ljubomir Kostovski is a veteran journalist and analyst, member of CIVIL’s editorial board, and editor-in-chief of Globus magazine.
This article was translated from Macedonian into English with the assistance of AI (ChatGPT), with editorial review.
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