Orbán’s Hungary – The Kremlin’s Trojan Horse

In an interesting turn in the saga of the 2016 US presidential election, President Barack Obama has requested an intelligence report on suspected hacking that took place before the election. The CIA believes that Russia intervened to help Donald Trump win and Obama has ordered the intelligence agencies to review cyberattacks and other foreign intervention.

Email accounts of Democratic National Committee officials and a Hillary Clinton campaign aide were hacked and the emails were leaked to Wikileaks. Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein has also named the cyberattacks for requesting the recount.

In October the US Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence already released a statement which alleged that Russia is behind the cyberattacks to undermine the election. Obama expects the completed report before he leaves office on January 20 and Republican Donald Trump assumes the presidency.

The Atlantic Council has also published a remarkable report, entitled The Kremlin’s Trojan horses, about Russian President Putin’s growing influence in Europe. (Read here.)

The Atlantic Council’s map of Putin friendly political parties in Europe.

The Atlantic Council’s map of Putin friendly political parties in Europe.

According to the report the Kremlin uses political parties as Trojan horses to destabilize European politics. It does it so efficiently, that even Russia’s limited might could become a decisive factor in matters of European and international security.

In Hungary’s case the report notes that Jobbik, Hungary’s far right party is under Russian influence while Fidesz, Hungary’s governing party, has “individuals associated with the party take a pro-Russian stance rather than the party itself.”

The study’s foreword was written Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s ex-Foreign Minister. Sikorsky and his wife, Washington Post columnist, Anne Applebaum used to be the darlings of Fidesz, they were friendly with the party leadership and in 2010 Ms. Applebaum received the Hungarian Petőfi Prize.

2010 - Radoslaw Sikorski (second from left) Polish and János Martonyi (third from left) Hungarian foreign ministers.  Not friends anymore.

2010 – Radoslaw Sikorski (second from left) Polish and János Martonyi (third from left) Hungarian foreign ministers. Not friends anymore.

Things have changed since then. They do not talk to their Fidesz friends anymore and Ms. Applebaum claims that Mr. Orbán and Mr. Putin are secretly trying to divide Ukraine. Hungary would grab Zakarpattia, the small Western-Ukrainian province Hitler gave back to fascist Hungary during World War II. Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party considers Zakarpattia as part of Hungary and distributes maps authored by Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky showing Russian, Romanian and Hungarian territorial demands on Ukraine.

Photo: Map of Russian, Romanian and Hungarian territorial demands on Ukraine. (Distributed by Hungarian far-right activists.)

Photo: Map of Russian, Romanian and Hungarian territorial demands on Ukraine. (Distributed by Hungarian far-right activists.)

Mr. Orbán is a vocal Putin ally. He opposes sanctions against Russia and signed a multibillion euro nuclear deal with Putin. Hungary today is a Putin-style kleptokracy and many think that the nuclear deal will benefit Mr. Orbán’s cronies. Mr. Orbán has also issued Hungarian passports to tens of thousands of Ukrainians of Hungarian origin and demanded autonomy for them. Mr. Putin used the same techniques in Eastern-Ukraine before starting to support the separatist movement.

Now Mr. Orbán hopes that during Trump’s tenure he might be able to visit the White House. He is upset that President Obama refused to talk to him; he was never invited to Washington.

Mr. Orbán’s hopes for friendlier relations with the Trump White House might be unfounded, in fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if President Trump would maintain an even tougher tone with his authoritarian regime.

György Lázár

13 Comments

  1. What a nonsense – “Fascist” Hungary, territorial claims and Jobbik, all smeared on to Orbán.

  2. Avatar Kalasz Musztafa says:

    Seriously this is the most stupidest article i ever read.

    “The CIA believes that Russia intervened to help Donald Trump win and Obama has ordered the intelligence agencies to review cyberattacks and other foreign intervention.”

    Now that is what we call a conspiracy theory, although you guys say that you dont believe in conspiracy theories. Bravo Leftists, political elite’s game at its best, thats exactly what the Elites want you to be…stupid as a lunatics in Lunatic asylum, while the Elites stays in power laughing at your retardation. Congratulation Marxists.

    • Musztafa,

      you’re right but please it’s not about being leftists or Marxists. Only a very small number of people or group are in the emotional and mental state that would allow them to understand what is going on that they are all consumed, hypnotized, and doomed as they are already destroyed. It doesn’t even make sense trying to wake them up or save them. It’s because they don’t want. They don’t have the technique to liberate themselves they insist to their illusions. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. It would destroy them the same way as their illusionary mistaken notion of reality. It’s time to give them up, not to waste our time and instead search for people in need who want to listen, and survive, and be helped. Who are in need. They are not.

      They are only stealing our time and energy and trying to make us visible. That’s their job regardless of whether they realize what they are doing or not.

      Or has it ever occurred to you to ask to whom they are writing and talking here, whom they are addressing?

      The only thing that seers can do to hide, wait for the final destruction that the evil power elite and their minions do and when it’s over reestablish human civilization. A devil free if it is ever possible at all.

  3. I don’t think Trump will sideline Orban like the racist Obama did. Obama had no problem meeting authoritarians in Africa, Cuba, and so on. So his government’s attacks against Orban has more to do with race than democracy. All one has to see is how Obama’s government has criticized what Hungary has done to curb the invasion of hundreds of thousands of migrants over the border. Sure the ambassador has played nice on the surface and even said “Hungary has every right to secure it’s borders”, but according to Orban and other officials, the most pressure on accepting migrants was coming from Washington, and that pressure was also placed on Brussels and Berlin. The fact is Obama wanted to flood our countries with migrants to smother us out of existence. He didn’t invited Orban not because Orban is the leader of what is considered a small Central European nation in D.C, but because Orban was opposed to what Obama’s admin was pushing behind the scenes.

    Trump will have good relations with Orban, because there is no reason for him not to. Trump wasn’t running as a some champion of “democracy”. We’ve see what champions of democracy have done to Syria, Iraq, and everywhere in between. Trump has actually spoken out against regime change in one of his recent speeches. Democracy itself is whatever you want it to be. It’s a figment of your imagination. Look at U.S democracy or Brussels style democracy where people can get elected with less votes, or commit vote fraud, or even not get any votes at all and just be appointed by bureaucrats. If they do vote their vote can be rejected or discarded, or said because it didn’t reach a threshold despite gaining widespread support in the vote, that doesn’t count. The media can mislead people and lie day and night, claiming that one candidate is losing by 12% to manipulate and throw an election.

  4. IN THE US THE DECENTS STILL OUTNUMBER THE DEPLORABLES

    Ascribing a consistent position to Trump on any issue (except scams like birtherism) betrays either inattention or fantasy. And it’s probably a good thing, too, that Trump is too much of an ignorant dilettante to be equipped or inclined to follow through on anything other than dissing his detractors and pumping for adulation.

    Fortunately, for the same (unfortunate) reason that neither Bill Clinton nor President Obama was able to put into practice his positive programs while in office (Clinton because of an internally divided democratic congress, President Obama because of a vindictively uncooperative republican one), Trump, though supported by a shameless T-party/altright republican congress cannot be a power onto himself. Some of the mad-dog republican appointee generals in his cabinet will see to it that his mad-dog collaborationist businessmen appointees will not be allowed to cowtow to the Kremlin.

    Not much solace there, since it’s just one sort of ill-willed self-interest pittted against another, in this infighting amongst deplorables. Yet it is this meagre residue of pluralism in the US (now unchecked/unbalanced) government that will prevent Trump from pushing his domestic advantage to the heinous heights of kleptocracy that Hungary’s top-cock-on-the-dump, Orban, could reach in his nasty little fiefdom where the depolorables seem to outnumber the decents by more than two to one.

    Decency is still in the majority in the US population, if not the electoral college.

    • Avatar Christopher Adam says:

      And I fear that the same cannot be said about Hungary and Hungarian society…so thorough is the demise of any sense of solidarity with others and the less fortunate.

  5. So as far as I see everything that is anti-western/liberal must be also Pro-Russia? This sounds “very reasonable”. Those political parties mentioned here of course have something in common with Russian attitudes or some ideas spread by Russian official media outlets but why does it have to be automatically wrong? Russian media is being called “Propaganda” by officials in the West but is CNN or FOX news or any other media outlet not “propagandist”?
    Anne Applebaum is the WIFE of former Polish foreign minister!!!!! Division of Ukraine is a ridiculous idea and the only people who could want it are Ukrainians themselves whose country was devastated for 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union
    Besides, I wonder how many people actually ever thought that Russians maybe have some valid points? It’s very stupid to see reality as “Chinese bad, Russians bad, everybody against western interests bad” ” America good, rich people good” etc.

  6. In Romania, the left wing, formerly communist party just won the election and has an absolute majority in both houses of the parliament.
    It is hard to understand this ‘free article’, since it is not based on the real facts but speculations.

  7. Christopher Adam employed a neo-nazi publicist for a year. His name is Tamas Kiss Szemenyei.

    Mr. Adam go and fuck yourself.

  8. It’s the Russians…
    hahaha what is this, you got your line from the CIA?! Yes Trump is a Russian agent too huh….hahaha.

  9. Oh jeez, this dude (author) should give back his diploma. What crazed mumbo-jumbo stitched together from gossips, revisionist websites and just pure leftists fantasy of looking for Nazis and Russian agents under the bed.

  10. Another day, another ridiculous piece masquarading as an article.

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