Tag Archives: Russia

Hungarians on the European Union, the Orbán government, and Russia

The European Commission just published the Winter 2020/2021 Standard Eurobarometer 94, measuring public opinion in the European Union. The study was conducted by Kantar, a large data, insights, and consulting company based in London. The fieldwork took place in February and March of 2021.

The first question Kantar asked the respondents was to judge the situation in general in their own countries. The  countries that got very good or rather good ratings on leadership are the ones we are familiar with from other surveys: Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The countries that got the worst ratings, very bad or rather bad, are Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Romania, and Slovakia. Hungary did not fare especially well. It seems that the population is not so satisfied with the Orbán regime as the Hungarian opinion polls would suggest. An absolute majority of Hungarians sampled, or 57%, consider the general situation to be bad.

When it comes the economy, Hungarians might not be as unhappy as the French (79%), the Bulgarians (82%), the Greeks (90%), or the Spaniards (91%), but 63% of Hungarians find the economy, which even today is being touted as one of the success stories of the Orbán government, nothing to brag about.

Another indicator that one ought to pay attention to is the perception of employment opportunities. Here again Hungarians belong to the group that find job opportunities limited. Hungary’s 64% can be compared to figures in Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Austria, and Latvia. The next question was “What are your expectations for the next twelve months: will the next twelve months be better, worse or the same, when it comes to your life in general?” About half of the population of the member states believe that life will remain the same for them in the next twelve months (51%), but 64% of the Hungarian respondents think that life will remain the same. When it comes to “the situation in the country in general,” only 21% believe that the country’s situation in the next twelve months will be better, 33% think it will be worse, and 45% think it will remain the same. As for the economic situation, 21% of Hungarian respondents think it will improve (the hard-core Pollyannas), 38% think it will get worse, and 39% think it will remain the same.

These findings speak to the overall mood of the country. The pollsters then asked a specific question concerning “the most important issues facing the country at the moment.” People could pick two from the following list: crime, the economy, inflation, taxation, unemployment, terrorism, housing, government debt, immigration, health, the education system, pensions, the environment and climate change, and energy supply.  Uppermost on the minds of Hungarians is health (50%). They are also concerned with inflation (37%), the state of the economy (30%), and unemployment (20%). Despite the rapidly growing national debt, only 9% consider it one of the two most important issues facing the country at the moment. And the incredible campaign against immigrants no longer resonates: only 7% of the population are worried. As for the sorry state of education, 7% of the Hungarian respondents put it in the top two; 10% chose low pensions.

Although all these and many other issues are fascinating in this very detailed survey, the real reason that I decided to cover it was the questions on popular views of national governments and the European Union. Here is the question as it is posed in the survey: “How much trust do you have in certain institutions? For each of the following institutions, do you tend to trust it or tend not to trust it?” Few people in the European Union truly trust their government. The exceptions are Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden. In Hungary 56% mistrust the government, which is still better than the situation in the Czech Republic, Spain, or Croatia. The same is true about the Hungarian parliament.

As for the European Union, here Hungarians surprise us. The EU27 average is 49% to 43% in favor of the European Union, with 8% having no opinion. In Hungary it is 56% to 36%. That approval rate more or less matches Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Support for NATO is also high in Hungary: 54% to 34%, a level that is practically the same as that in Germany or Poland. It is hard to imagine, but even the “Brussels bureaucrats,” i.e., the European Commission, is trusted by a majority of the population (62%) despite years of a government campaign against it. The European Parliament is also trusted by 64% of the population, which is higher than their trust in the parliament in Budapest.

In brief, the majority of the Hungarian population tends not to trust the government, worries about the economy, inflation, and jobs. The sorry state of healthcare (or perhaps, in the minds of the respondents, the government’s response to the pandemic) is the most serious concern of the population. What is especially striking is that trust in the institutions of the European Union is a great deal higher than in the national ones.

Finally, I would like to add another recent survey by Globsec, which is headquartered in Bratislava. In the East and Central European region are some countries that are traditionally pro-Russia, such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Montenegro. At the other end of the scale are countries like Poland and Romania that look upon Russia as a threat. Other nations in the region, including Hungary, don’t consider Putin’s Russia a direct threat to the country, but 53% of the Hungarian population consider Russian behavior too aggressive toward its neighbors. They also see Russia as a country that tries to weaken the European Union and NATO.

I suspect that Putin’s quick retreat under U.S. and EU pressure will have an impact on Russia’s standing in the world. It is also possible that Viktor Orbán will lose a close political friend, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who the other day praised Joe Biden as “the best prepared politician he has ever spoken with…. He always had good judgment and always wanted to listen to us.” Vučić is courting the United States in preparation for renouncing the Serbian claim to Kosovo. If Orbán doesn’t watch out, he may remain isolated in the Visegrád 4 as well as in the region as a whole.

April 23, 2021

Viktor Orbán considers Russia a threat to Europe

The last time Viktor Orbán said anything critical about Russia was in 2009, that is before he became prime minister again in May 2010. Since then he hasn’t uttered one disparaging word against Vladimir Putin’s increasingly autocratic rule, nor has he called attention to the dangers Russia poses to its neighbors. On the contrary, he  has consistently protested charges of a Russian threat to the Central European countries and has developed close working relations with the Russian president. Although Viktor Orbán quietly voted for economic sanctions against Russia due to its annexation of Crimea, he publicly expressed his disapproval of the decision, calling it a mistake, a case of the EU shooting itself in the foot. In fact, there were times when Hungarian foreign policy initiatives were outright helpful to Russia. The recent Hungarian pressure on Ukraine is a good example of the help Viktor Orbán is capable of providing to his Russian friends. Not even American cajoling seems to make an impression on Viktor Orbán, who insists of barring Ukraine from developing a closer relationship with NATO.

But then two days ago Viktor Orbán gave an interview to Magyar Televízió’s M1 after the first day of negotiations at the NATO summit. In this approximately 10-minute interview Orbán publicly acknowledged that Russia poses a danger to the European Union and said that that’s why the member states must spend more money on defense. I highly recommend to anyone with a knowledge of Hungarian both the interview and the text that goes with it on the website of Híradó, the government’s official version of “news,” because it shows the government media’s confusion over the permissibility of reporting on a topic that until now has been taboo. In fact, the reporter who conducted the interview tried to steer Orbán away from the topic by asking him only about the danger that is threatening the European Union from the South, meaning the refugee issue, and ignoring any reference to the danger coming from the East. It was actually Orbán who insisted on talking about the Russian threat.

This short reference to Russia as a threat piqued the interest of analysts, who wondered whether there had been a change in Hungary’s Russia policy. Péter Krekó of Political Capital claimed to have noticed that the Orbán government recently sent a message, intended for both domestic and foreign consumption, that “Orbán is not Putin’s puppet.” I must say that I didn’t notice any such subtle policy change, but I did find Péter Szijjártó’s negotiations with German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and a couple of powerful Bundestag committee chairmen more than intriguing. On July 5, while Viktor Orbán was having talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Szijjártó tried to convince the German politicians that the best location for a multinational (Hungarian-Slovak-Croatian-Slovenian) NATO regional command center would be Hungary. The Hungarian foreign minister argued that NATO has 22 divisional command centers but none is in Central Europe. Szijjártó was actually lobbying to have a NATO command center for Central Europe placed on Hungarian soil.

Then yesterday the news broke that Vladimir Putin wanted to have an urgent talk with Viktor Orbán tomorrow. Orbán was planning to attend the World Cup finals, but no meeting with Putin was included in his schedule. In fact, plans had already been made for a Moscow trip in September. Népszava learned about this unscheduled meeting through a Reuters news report yesterday morning. It was Yuri Ushakov, the former Russian ambassador to the United States and currently aide to President Putin responsible for international affairs, who broke the news to the Reuters reporter in Moscow. Magyar Idők and Magyar Hírlap opted to ignore the story.

What does this mean? From Ushakov’s announcement we know that it was Putin who initiated the meeting. Considering that tomorrow is not only Sunday but also the last day of the World Cup games, the Kremlin must have considered it an urgent matter. Does it have anything to do with the Hungarian request for an additional NATO command center and Viktor Orbán’s specific, pointed reference to Russian danger? In a probably naive read, Putin might simply want to have a first-hand report from an insider about the details of the NATO summit before his meeting with Donald Trump. More likely, it is be a sign of Putin’s annoyance with Orbán’s unnecessary and provocative public condemnation of Russia.

We are also in the dark concerning the real intentions of Viktor Orbán. Is he planning to reverse his foreign policy orientation or is he simply employing his usual diversionary tactics? If the shift is genuine, Hungary should settle its differences with Ukraine in an amicable way, but as far as we know Hungary hasn’t moved an inch on the issue despite American prodding. In order to develop more friendly relations with the United States, the case of Central European University must be resolved, as the new American ambassador made crystal clear. And yet the Orbán government still hasn’t done anything on this front. So these latest signs of moving closer to the West might just be the usual Orbán attempts to muddy the waters.

And yet, it looks as if Orbán came away from the NATO summit with the feeling that the members had been drawn together in large measure because of the Russian threat. In the same interview in which he talked about the Eastern threat he also compared this year’s summit favorably to the one held last year. As he put it, the positions have coalesced since then, and the members now share a common purpose. This is what I believe Gábor Horváth, editor-in-chief of Népszava and a foreign policy expert, had in mind when in an editorial he wrote about Putin’s contribution to the success of this year’s summit. He frightened the Western allies, including Viktor Orbán, to death, which awakened their sense of self-preservation and made them ready to be open to American demands for increased military spending.

Viktor Orbán, as a result of his balancing act between Russia and the West, got himself and his country into the whirlwind of international relations, which now, in these volatile political circumstances, makes Hungary’s situation very difficult. It is impossible to know what the future will bring with regard to U.S.-Russian and U.S.-Chinese relations. And how the European Union will position itself. If Orbán’s ambition hadn’t propelled him onto the world stage, he wouldn’t today be in a quandary over where to find his place in the sun.

July 14, 2018

Russian propaganda in Hungarian government media

Index published an article today on a newly released study by the Corruption Research Center (CRC) which, despite its name, is a Hungarian organization. This study has nothing to do with corruption. Instead, the group tried to find answers to questions about the influence of Russian propaganda on the Orbán government’s more important online news sites. The result? “What we always suspected turned out to be true. The government press is loaded with Russian propaganda.”

How did Corruption Research Center come to this conclusion? They used big data methods. They collected one million articles, or 278 million words, from eight Hungarian sites and compared them to the Russian-based Hungarian-language site Hídfő (Bridgehead), where, it is suspected, the articles are translations from their Russian originals. The researchers analyzed four general topics: (1) those that may be disagreeable to the Russian government, (2) anything connected to “migrants” and “refugees,” (3) those dealing with “migrants” and “terror,” and (4) those on “migrants” and “violence.” In addition to the six government publications, Index and Magyar Nemzet, two independent media outlets, were also included in the study.

CRC described the relationships of the eight media outlets to Hídfő (hidfo.hu) using geographical distance markers. If Hídfő is Moscow, 888.hu is Dubna, a small town near Moscow; Lokál is Voronezh; Magyar Idők is Chernobyl; Pesti Srácok is Zhytomyr; and Origo is Volgograd. Only Index and Magyar Nemzet are in Hungary.

After taking a look at Hídfő, I really don’t know how useful this exercise was because Hídfő cannot be compared to any internet sites I’m familiar with, Hungarian or American. It can probably best be described as a “political National Enquirer.” I suspect that Sputnik and Russia Today are used more often by those who don’t speak Russian, although some of the most ardent government supporters are fluent in Russian, having studied there in their youth.

The crude Russian propaganda that can be found in Hídfő is truly mind boggling. Here are a couple of examples from their latest crop of articles. According to this Russian propaganda site, the Slovak journalist was actually murdered by members of the Soros network. As the author puts it, “the Soros network is ready to murder its most popular activists and journalists for the sake of advancing the cause of an open society.” Or, in another article on the same topic, Hídfő advances the theory that since nobody is interested in the liberal journalists’ investigations of corruption, for example, in Hungary, the Soros network decides to murder them in order to spark large demonstrations, as was the case in Slovakia.

As for the post I wrote yesterday about the Migration Aid affair, here is Hídfő’s version of what happened. According to the author, Migration Aid “was taking part in the preparation of  German-type migrant violence.” Although I read the article rather carefully, I was not able to discern what German-type migrant violence is. András Siewert, the article continues, became the head of “an organization that is part of an international network of foreign agents.” The “fact” that Siewert was in contact with the German military attaché in Budapest is “a very worrisome development.” Although I have a very low opinion of the Hungarian government-sponsored outlets, they don’t go that far when reporting news.

Let’s see an 888.hu article about the recent Russian election. It is unabashedly pro-Russian, starting with the headline, which reads: “The Russians are now really intervening in an election, that is, in their own.” Meaning: surely, we don’t believe that Russia had anything whatsoever to do with the U.S. election. Then the author, a certain Gellért Oláh, assures his readers that Putin has no intention of staying in power after 2024 and will not change the Russian constitution to remain in power after that date. After all, he said so himself. Relying on information from Russia Today, the author argues that the German media grossly violated Russia’s sovereignty when Deutsche Welle’s Russian-language internet site tried to convince Russians to stay away from the polls. The article also notes that “Ukraine, the largest puppet government of the American CIA, decided not to allow Russians living on its territory to participate in the election.” Kiev considers the Russian election illegal because it was also held in the Crimea, “where the inhabitants of the peninsula after a plebiscite returned to Russia.”

888.hu is clearly pro-Russian and, as this article attests, its presentation of the news grossly favors the Russian side. The same is true about Magyar Idők, but its treatment of Russia-related articles is more subtle than 888.hu’s. The article I chose as a point of comparison is about the recent meeting of the EU foreign ministers where Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was trying to gain the support of his colleagues in the U.K.-Russia dispute. The article announces that, “to the misfortune of the foreign secretary,” the foreign ministers, instead of punishing Russia, wanted facts. Although several foreign ministers are identified as having doubts about taking extreme measures against Russia, Péter Szijjártó’s name is not mentioned among them.

We know, however, that Hungary is very careful not to alienate Russia. A good example is the official Hungarian “condemnation” of the attack on Sergey Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury. Since most of the NATO alliance condemned the attack, Hungary decided that it had to make a gesture as well. But the government did it in such a way that neither Russia nor the name of the victim was mentioned. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade condemns in the strongest terms the nerve agent attack against the United Kingdom on March 4, 2018, which it considers to be a breach of relevant international norms as well as the Chemical Weapons Convention. As a NATO ally Hungary expresses its solidarity with the United Kingdom. Hungary supports the efforts of the British Government at fully investigating the circumstances of the crime and trusts that the perpetrators will be held accountable as soon as possible.” Of course, this carefully worded response resulted in a strange linguistic construction: the nerve agent was not directed against individuals but against the United Kingdom.

I don’t know how long this double game can continue, but I’m convinced that one day the patience of Hungarians will run out. I hope it will be very soon.

March 22, 2018

Orbán lending a helping hand to Putin in Ukraine

In the fall and winter of 2017 I wrote three articles on Hungarian-Ukrainian affairs in which I spelled out in some detail the Orbán government’s antagonistic policies toward Ukraine. The proximate cause of the conflict was Ukraine’s education law, enacted in September 2017, which mandated that Ukrainian would be the primary language of instruction in schools for all students, regardless of their national origin.

The real target of this piece of legislation was the very large Russian minority in eastern Ukraine. But in addition to Russians, Ukraine also has small pockets of Polish, Romanian, and Hungarian minorities. All three of these countries objected to certain parts of the new law. The European Union’s Venice Commission also found some provisions of the law objectionable. But it was only Hungary that reacted to the legislation with unfettered ferocity. Hungary as a member of the European Union and NATO decided to use all of the power at its disposal and veto every attempt by Ukraine to move closer to the West. Given the war that’s going on in the Donbas region and the threat Russia is posing to the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Hungary’s hostile stance and the Orbán government’s steadfast refusal to negotiate with the Ukrainians regarding modifications to the law serve only the interest of Russia.

There is no need to beat around the bush. In this Ukrainian-Hungarian conflict, the Orbán government is acting as a stooge of Putin’s Russia.

Let’s take the latest incident in Uzhhorod/Ungvár, the administrative center of Zakarpattia Oblast. The city has a population of 115,000, but the number of Hungarian speakers is small. Sources consistently state that there are no more than 8,000 Hungarian speakers in Uzhhorod. According to the local Hungarians as well as the Ukrainians in the city, there is no friction between the two ethnic groups. So when on February 4 unknown persons tried to set fire to the Hungarian Cultural Center, the consensus was that the perpetrators couldn’t have been locals.

The governor of Zakarpattia suspected that the attack was organized by Russian security forces, which have for some time been active in inciting conflicts between Ukraine’s small minority groups and Kiev. Such an assumption comes naturally to officials of Ukraine, a country that has been at odds with Russia for years. But it seems that the governor’s instincts were right in this case.

The Ukrainian police force established that two pro-Russian Polish extremists who had most likely fought on the Russian side in Donbas were the ones who set fire to the building. A few days later Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) confirmed the findings of the Ukrainians and announced that they are investigating “the international contacts of the people detained.” We know, of course, what kinds of “international contacts” the officials of ABW were looking for.

It is unlikely that ABW failed to inform the Hungarian security forces about the arrest of the three Polish pro-Russian extremists who are suspected of working for the Russians. But the Hungarian government acted as if they had never heard of the arrests. None of the Hungarian papers reported the story, and the anti-Ukrainian propaganda continued unabated. The Hungarian government kept blaming the Ukrainian government’s nationalistic rhetoric for the attack. And Foreign Minister Szijjártó insisted that the Hungarian minority was in such danger that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe should send a permanent observer to the Hungarian region of Zakarpattia Oblast.

Then, on February 27, someone threw a Molotov cocktail into the Hungarian Cultural Center, which destroyed the whole first floor of the building. By that time, Polish experts had a fair amount of knowledge about the “organized, coordinated Russian campaign, carried out by paid provocateurs as part of a broad information operation,” as Adam Lelonek, director of the Center for Propaganda and Disinformation Analysis, a Warsaw-based think tank, told The Daily Beast. Without going into the fine points, suffice it to say that the Polish intelligence community is convinced that “the real force behind [these attacks] is the Russian intelligence services.” The game plan is to perpetrate small incidents repeatedly. This might seem at first glance to be amateurish, but the “drip, drip, drip” campaign has already had its effect on the relations between neighbors and within Ukraine. And it seems that Hungary is actually a willing partner in this dirty Russian game.

Anyone who thinks that I’m exaggerating Hungary’s culpability should take a look at a program called “Szemtől szembe” (Face to Face) on Channel M1 on Magyar Televízió. M1 invited two men who were supposed to know something about Ukraine. Zsolt Pászkán is an “expert” in the foreign ministry’s Institute of Foreign Affairs and Trade, whose actual expertise is the Romanian minority in Ukraine. The other invited “expert” was General József Horváth, a security analyst and a leftover from the Kádár regime. He worked in those days for the III/III department of the Ministry of Interior. In brief, he was part of the organization that handled domestic spying for the regime. That didn’t bother the Fidesz government, which made him head of the national security services. After the socialist-liberal government fired him in 2002, Horváth and some of his colleagues established a private firm which most likely spied on the socialist government for Fidesz while the party was in opposition. He was a major figure in Fidesz’s clandestine efforts to ruin Ibolya Dávid, chairman of MDF, in retaliation for her refusal to join Fidesz during the 2006 election campaign. So, it’s no wonder that after 2010 Horváth became a general.

The two experts pondered the circumstances of and the possible reasons for these attacks on the Hungarian Cultural Center in Uzhhorod. Interestingly, after 20 minutes of hard thinking they came to the conclusion that the only country that could possibly benefit from these attacks was Ukraine itself. As far as these two were concerned, Ukraine is the country that wants to drag Russia into this affair. But it is not in Russia’s interest to get embroiled in Ukrainian internal affairs. Moscow has no designs on Ukraine and has no plans for Donbas; in fact, Moscow is happy with the present situation.

The Russians couldn’t possibly be behind these attacks because simultaneously with the arson attempt in Uzhhorod, 300 km away two attacks took place against Romanian schools. Therefore, in the simple mind of Zsolt Pászkán, the same organization couldn’t be responsible for both. Horváth went so far as to allege that the Ukrainians “whispered into the ears of the Poles” to accuse Russian groups of the crime. He came to the conclusion that “it is possible that the attacks against the Romanian and Hungarian minorities are merely a pretext for a strike against Donbas by Ukraine.” Horváth reminded his audience that Ukraine has been getting weapons from the United States, weapons that are capable of not just defensive but also offensive warfare. Thus, in some bizarre way, the Ukrainian government’s attacks on the Hungarian Cultural Center have something to do with Kiev’s plans to attack the Russian “supervisory forces” in Donbas.

Meanwhile, Hungarian government papers are full of stories about the extreme nationalism of Ukrainians and the Kiev government’s oppressive treatment of the Hungarian minority. They level accusations against Kiev while the pro-Russian extremists who are in custody are not even mentioned. Unfortunately, as is usual in such cases, the opposition parties don’t dare to put an end to the constant badgering of Ukraine in case patriotic Hungarians would think they weren’t standing up for the threatened Hungarian minority abroad. Accusations fly without any proof whatsoever.

However, The Daily Beast arranged an interview with János Széky, who contributed an article for Hungarian Spectrum a couple of years ago in which he wrote that “everybody knows these are Russian-initiated provocations, yet the Hungarian government never acknowledges it. They say these are the results of a centrally directed anti-Hungarian hate campaign. Which is a vicious lie.” Yes it is. This is the real situation. Viktor Orbán made Hungary an accomplice of Vladimir Putin in his diabolical designs to regain Russia’s super power status and recover its lost territories.

March 3, 2018

Hungarians in praise of Vladimir Putin and his empire

It was only a few days ago that I devoted a post to Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó’s visit to Washington, where he met the new assistant secretary of state in charge of European and Eurasian Affairs, Wess Mitchell. It is hard to pass judgment on the meeting because both parties remained silent on the subject. One thing, however, is fairly certain: there are no definite plans for Viktor Orbán to travel to Washington and meet with President Trump. As Jenő Megyesy, an Orbán adviser on American affairs, put it, “such bilateral meetings are important only when there is some important topic or conflict on the horizon.” This is not the case today. This kind of talk indicates that there is no significant improvement in U.S.-Hungarian relations. One of the obstacles to closer links between the two countries is Russian-Hungarian relations.

Today I would like to call attention to two manifestations of the uncritical pro-Russian attitude propagated in the Hungarian administration and in the media. The first one comes straight from the Ministry of Defense. It is an article written by Lt. Colonel Endre Szénási, security and defense policy expert in the ministry’s Department of Defense Policy (Védelempolitikai Főosztály). The other was written by László Gy. Tóth, who is described in the media as “a political scientist close to the government.” He is an old hand in the trade. In 1997 he published a series of essays about “The heirs of Kádárism,” which I picked up by mistake and found to be utterly worthless.

Let’s start with a Hungarian military man’s assessment of the United States, Russia, NATO, and military matters in general. Before Szijjártó’s meeting with Wess Mitchell, the foreign minister pointed out that both in military and in economic matters relations between the United States and Hungary are excellent. Problems crop up only in political relations between the two countries. But do these two NATO allies see eye to eye on matters related to defense and their relationship to Russia when a chief analyst of the Ministry of Defense identifies with the interests of Vladimir Putin’s Russia? Because this is exactly what Szénási does. The article is actually about Michael Flynn’s “regrettable” departure from the White House, which may put an end to Donald Trump’s attempt at a rapprochement with Russia.

It is not Szénási’s erroneous analysis of American politics that deserves our attention but his statements on Russia and its role in world affairs. In his opinion, Russia is not an expansionist country. “It is only defending its own historical sphere of interest.” Russia is not “even aggressive since it didn’t force a change of regime in Georgia by military means. It didn’t bomb the Georgian ministry of defense, which in a classic war situation is the number one target. Unlike the United States it didn’t enforce regime change; it didn’t overthrow the government; it didn’t occupy Tbilisi.”

Russia wasn’t an aggressor in the Ukrainian case either. “Since 2014 it has occupied only that part of the Donets-Lugansk region which has a clear Russian identity. Moreover, the West mistakenly believes that the occupation of Crimea was an act of aggression. As far as Lt. Colonel Szénási is concerned, it is perfectly acceptable for Russia to militarily occupy territories of another country whose territorial integrity it had guaranteed earlier.

This article appeared originally in Terror & Elhárítás (Terror and interception), a periodical published by TEK (Terrorelhárítási Központ), often described as Viktor Orbán’s private army. It was subsequently discovered by András Domány, a well-known journalist and expert on Polish affairs. In his article in Élet és Irodalom, titled “Kormányzati tudomány” (Government science), he wonders whether the leadership of NATO or the Ukrainian government is aware of the appearance of this article and whether they will be satisfied with the explanation that this is just the private opinion of a government official. Because officially, Hungary is still one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 444 also picked up the story of Szénási’s lofty defense of Russia and added a few more quotations from other works by the security and defense expert.

Now, let’s move on to the article of our political scientist, László Gy. Tóth. Perhaps someone should translate the whole article because almost every sentence in it is an outrage. Here is one of the first sentences: “Judged by his activities to date, Vladimir Putin’s rational policies are of serious value.” After a sob story about Putin’s poverty-stricken childhood and his hard-working, deeply religious mother, Tóth goes on to praise him as the president of a country which is described as “a constitutional democracy that differs from the western variety because of the somewhat archaic and traditionalist value system of Russian society.” Putin guarantees human rights but “supports only those cultural trends that are not in conflict with traditional Russian values.”

As far as foreign affairs are concerned, “Russia is open to the world.” It attempts to be a partner with the EU and NATO. As Putin said, “We must try to configure a Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” This new Europe would be based on some kind of supranationalism, which means “a higher ranking cooperation of nationalisms.” I guess a united Europe under Vladimir Putin would be preferable to what we have now in Europe, which Viktor Orbán thoroughly detests.

The tension between the European Union and Russia is solely the fault of the United States. For decades American foreign policy strategists have been trying to isolate Russia by “generating conflict between the European Union and Russia. They have created an operetta-revolution in Belgrade, a revolution in Georgia in 2003, and a Ukrainian revolution in 2004. How? Through George Soros, various kinds of NGOs, and the CIA.

Yet “Putin is more and more accepted in Europe because it dawned on European politicians that today Russia has nothing to do with the former Soviet Union.” Russia today is, “in the good sense of the word, a nationalist, presidential, constitutional state that wants to base its future on traditionalist values. One must take cognizance of the fact that Russia is the leading military power of Europe and the only country in the world whose nuclear capabilities are not one bit smaller than those of the increasingly aggressive and unpredictable United States.”

In Tóth’s view, “in the newly created cold war, the Russian position is unequivocal and rational. If the United States acts in violation of previously concluded bilateral arms-control agreements, Russia will react immediately. This is a clear and rational standpoint that the Americans must accept.” Tóth adds: “Hungary was among the first countries to recognize that the Russian Empire has returned to the stage of the great powers.”

What can one say? It is hard to imagine that a member of Hungary’s armed forces and an official in the ministry of defense can spout off freely, expressing policies that are diametrically opposed to the official policies of Hungary. One must ask: What is the official policy of Hungary vis-à-vis Russia? Does anyone know for sure? Can its NATO allies trust the Hungarian military establishment when a long-time employee of the ministry and a member of the country’s military holds views like the ones that are expressed in his available writings? I have no idea, but I assume that the U.S. military attaché and his staff do read periodicals pertaining to military matters and have noted the appearance of articles like Szénási’s. Because I’m sure that anyone who took the trouble could find scores of articles similar in spirit to what is exhibited in Szénási’s pieces.

As for László Gy. Tóth, the so-called political scientist, one can hardly find words to describe the article’s sycophantic tone. Moreover, the article is sprinkled with old turns of phrase from the Rákosi and Kádár regimes. Phrases like “az Egyesült Államok kiszolgálói” (the hired hands of the United States) return in this article. One could perhaps argue that Tóth is just a political scientist, but such an article couldn’t appear in Magyar Idők without approval. This particular article might be stronger than some others that appear in the paper praising Russia and its leader, but Magyar Idők and Magyar Hírlap are both full of pro-Russian editorials. One must assume that the publication of these articles doesn’t bother the Orbán government at all; in fact, it endorses them.

January 23, 2018

Morawiecki’s pilgrimage to Budapest: It might have been in vain

Viktor Orbán was evidently pleased with his administration’s impressive show of diplomatic prowess when he boasted two days ago that “This is a strong beginning to the year; in two days two prime ministers of the European Union visited Budapest.” He announced this during the press conference that he and Leo Varadkar, Taoiseach of Ireland, held on Thursday. Varadkar’s was only a quick working visit. By contrast, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki was received the day before with great fanfare, which included the appearance of a colorful “huszár bandérium.”

The trip to Budapest was the first official visit of the newly appointed Polish prime minister. In addition to acknowledging the historical friendship between the two countries and to reinforcing the ideological ties that bind Kaczyński’s Poland and Orbán’s Hungary, the trip was intended to serve pragmatic interests. Under normal circumstances, Hungary has to play second fiddle to the much larger and stronger Poland, but today it is Poland that badly needs the goodwill and benevolence of Hungary. The reason is that Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, announced on December 20, 2017 that “it is with a heavy heart that we’ve decided to trigger article 7 point 1 [of the EU Treaty], but the facts leave us no choice.” The expectation in Poland is that Viktor Orbán would veto the implementation of article 7 against Poland if and when such an eventuality actually takes place. In fact, Euobserver took the Hungarian veto for granted, which might be premature because that threat didn’t come from Viktor Orbán but from Zsolt Semjén, who is prone to hyperbole. While journalists in Brussels looked upon the new Polish prime minister’s visit to Hungary as a snub, Polish commentators saw the trip very differently. The consensus is that Morawiecki traveled to Budapest to receive assurance from Viktor Orbán that the expected veto would be forthcoming. Polish diplomatic moves in the next months will depend on such assurances.

There were hussars but no promise of a veto / MTI / Photo: Tamás Kovács

Polish commentaries reported that the Poles were expecting Viktor Orbán to say it out loud, right there, during the press conference that “he would not allow the EU to punish” Poland. But the word everybody was waiting for was not forthcoming, as the pro-government, conservative Rzeczpospolita pointed out. What follows in this article is a long list of Orbán’s sins, among them his pro-Russian policies and his demand for autonomy for the Hungarian minority in Ukraine during the Russian aggression against that country. The conclusion is that Hungary is a difficult and perhaps even unreliable ally. For the Poles, Viktor Orbán’s Facebook note, “Poland has not yet perished, So long as we still live,” didn’t mean much because these words are merely a line from the Polish national anthem, not a promise to stand by Poland.

Hungarians also noticed the absence of any mention of Article 7 in the hour-long press conference because surely, said Szabolcs Vörös of Válasz, it is hard to imagine that the matter wasn’t brought up during the conversation between the two men. Orbán mostly talked about Eastern Europe as the engine of the European economy, strong and economically successful member nations, and migration, which will spark serious debates in 2018. As for Morawiecki, his comments were even less enlightening. According to him, the two countries see eye to eye on current issues in Europe, member nations must be united on the question of Brexit, and, naturally, Poland has the same opinion on migration as Hungary does.

That wasn’t much, but what was really surprising was that no journalist who attended the press conference directed a question to either man on the crucial topic of Article 7, Poland’s current headache. But then a Polish paper, Gazeta Wiadomosci, revealed that the Polish journalists who accompanied Morawiecki to Budapest had agreed ahead of time to inquire about Article 7, but when it came time for the two questions they were allowed to ask of the two prime ministers their inquiries turned out to be trivial. The same was true of the Hungarian journalists. The paper came to the conclusion that “there was censorship in Budapest.”

It is true that Orbán subsequently gave a lengthy interview to Poland’s public television station in which he assured his audience that “Hungary stands by Poland,” whatever that means. Yet there are signs that the Poles don’t really trust Hungary as an ally. The spokeswoman of the liberal Nowoczesna, a liberal party, said in a radio interview: “I was just stunned; our diplomacy hasn’t changed at all. We entrust our security to Hungary, who sides with Russia. It is sad that we had to go to Hungary for Orbán’s veto, which at the end we didn’t get.”

The most detailed analysis of current Polish-Hungarian relations appeared in Független Hírügynökség. The article is simply signed as “Sikorsky,” although I suspect the author is Hungarian, someone who seems to be thoroughly familiar with Polish as well as Slovak and Czech affairs. In his opinion, the Czechs and Slovaks believed that Morawiecki’s trip to Budapest was first and foremost “a message to Brussels” that Hungary stands squarely behind Poland, and that was most likely the expectation of the Polish government as well. The new government spokesman, Michał Dworczyk, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that the dispute between Warsaw and Brussels will be “among the most important items on the agenda.” In fact, he pretty well admitted that it was the real purpose of the meeting. The Polish prime minister wanted to have assurances of a solid alliance before he faced the European Commission.

After Orbán’s silence, several commentaries appeared in the Visegrád countries, among them one in the Slovak Pravda, in which Ivan Drábek reminded people that the leaders of PiS haven’t forgotten Orbán’s duplicity when, instead of keeping his promise to Poland to block the reelection of Donald Tusk, he actually supported Tusk’s appointment as president of the European Council. The Polish Gazeta Wyborcza’s editorial also considers Hungary an unreliable ally. According to the author, Poland needs an ally that would be a reliable partner in the long run against both Russia and Germany. A Hungarian commentator in Népszava in a different context talked about Morawiecki and Orbán as two fantasts. Such a designation might be true of the Poles, who dream of being a great power between Russia and Germany, but it is certainly not true of Orbán, who is an unsentimental pragmatist. If he decides that it is not in his interest to support Poland, he will abandon the country without a second thought. He might already have done so.

January 6, 2018

Russian influence on the Hungarian “government-organized media”

In the last few months I have noticed a growing interest in the spread of “fake news” in the government-sponsored media, which Péter Krekó of Political Capital calls “government-organized media.” This is an important topic, given the government’s power over these media outlets and the amount of money it spends to keep them alive. It is a well-known fact that all regional papers are in the hands of pro-Fidesz oligarchs and that their content is provided from the center. Excellent graphs in an article published by Átlátszó at the end of November show the preponderance of government media. Through its daily and weekly papers, internet sites, and radio and television networks, Fidesz-government propaganda reaches 8.7 million people, whereas critical voices get to only 3.1 million. The only media surface where there is more or less parity is the internet, where 50% of the sites are government critical as opposed to 37% pro-Fidesz sites.

It would take a great deal more study of the “government-organized media” before one could give a full picture of how it is structured and what its end-goal is in spreading fake news. An incredible number of news items and opinion pieces appear in solidly Fidesz publications, such as Magyar Idők, Magyar Hírlap, and Demokrata, in which real and fake news are intertwined. The fake news items originate mainly in Russia and the United States.

Russian news and propaganda comes via English-language channels like Russia Today and Sputnik. The former is already available in Hungary for subscribers to a UPC package that includes CNN, BBC, and now RT. But since few people in Hungary speak English and, as László Seres claims, the “Eastern Opening” is not popular, most Hungarians are not being subjected to Russian propaganda directly. Instead, it is right-wing Hungarian journalists who rely on the news provided by these Russian propaganda sources and spread it, primarily through Magyar Idők and Magyar Hírlap.

A few months ago the rumor circulated that RT will start a Hungarian-language TV network, but this was just talk. Péter Krekó is right: to establish such a network would be a total waste of money since the Hungarian government is serving up Russian propaganda quite willingly. As for Seres’s claim that the majority of Hungarians are against the “Eastern Opening,” this might be true, but there is a large minority that is passionately pro-Russian and admires Vladimir Putin to no end. The other day both Magyar Hírlap and Mandiner, an online news site, published opinion pieces expressing their disgust at the European Union’s criticism of the Russian authorities’ decision to bar opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running in next year’s presidential election. The comments that followed these articles showed a great deal of sympathy for Putin and the Russia he has built. This pro-Russian crowd is still a minority, but, with the help of the Hungarian government-sponsored media, pro-Russian sentiment is growing.

Pro-government Hungarian media outlets also rely on internet news sites that practically specialize in fake news and conspiracy theories. Infowars is one of these, which is quoted often enough in Magyar Hírlap and Magyar Idők. Media Bias/Fact Check, which styles itself as “the most comprehensive media bias resource,” describes Infowars as “extreme right.” It is considered to be “a questionable source [that] exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, overt propaganda, poor or no sourcing to credible information and/or is fake news.” Infowars uses material from Russian propaganda news sites and from conspiracy websites such as Zero Hedge.

One can also find references in the Fidesz media to Your News Wire, which is described by Media Bias/Fact Check as belonging to the “conspiracy-pseudoscience category,” which may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. Another source that crops up in Magyar Hírlap and Magyar Idők is Daily Caller, which is “moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation.” Daily Caller uses strongly loaded words in an attempt to influence, and they publish misleading reports or omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. All in all, the foreign news that reaches the readers of government papers, whether it comes from Russia or the United States, is strongly biased at best and fabricated at worst.

Let me give an illustration from an opinion piece written by István Lovas, in which I read the incredible news that “American military forces that are staying illegally in Syria enable ISIS terrorists to participate in military exercises at their military base near Al-Tanf.” The news reached Hungary thanks to the good offices of Russia Today. This astonishing news was reported by Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the armed forces of Russia and first deputy defense minister. The Russians have proof: satellite sighting and intelligence reports. I found only one article, on a right-wing internet site called Strategic Culture Foundation, that carried the news today. The problem is that their source was the same Russia Today that was also the source for Lovas. Strategic Culture took the alleged news seriously and created quite a story around it, accusing Donald Trump of a dirty double game.

Finally, there are some western journalists who spread pro-Russian propaganda. Botond Bőtös of Átlátszó wrote an article recently about F. William Engdahl, an American writer based in Germany. As Wikipedia puts it, “he identifies himself as an economic researcher, historian and freelance journalist.” Engdahl’s propaganda, via Hungarian intermediaries, reached Hungary as well. There might be a connection between his old preoccupation with “George Soros and his financial network” and Viktor Orbán’s propaganda campaign against Soros.

All in all, the Hungarian government media serves Russian propaganda well, thanks to a number of domestic and foreign pro-Russian propagandists busily spreading the word.

December 30, 2017