In a newly released bombshell report from intelligence journalist Michael D. Weiss and other reporters comes news that highly placed officials inside Russia‘s and Hungary‘s government were conspiring to, among other things, block Ukraine from joining European Union.
On December 14, 2023, at the European Council meeting in Brussels, EU leaders gathered to open accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova. They faced strong opposition from one of their own: Hungary. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán had threatened to veto the decision and used the issue as leverage in his disputes with Brussels over more than €22 billion in EU cohesion and recovery funds frozen due to Hungary’s rule-of-law violations.
Orbán, as usual, was accompanied by Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, who during one of the breaks went out of the meeting room to call his Russian colleague Sergey Lavrov.
via VSquare
Which is precisely when things got interesting: that conversation, described by an intel source as “more akin to a spy handler and agent in the field than to two peer foreign ministers,” also had the chummy tenor of a subordinate kissing his boss’ ass.
‘Peter, how are you? I’m doing good,’ Lavrov greeted Szijjártó, who dutifully explained how negotiations were going and what Hungary’s plan for the meeting entailed. Lavrov certainly liked what he heard. ‘Ok, good, yes, yes, excellent,’ the Russian said. ‘Sometimes good-willed direct blackmailing is the best option.’
via VSquare
Hungary is a member of European Union and, at least on paper, should be acting in accordance with EU’s mission. But Orbán as “Putin’s proxy” has been an open secret in geopolitical circles for nearly all of his 12 years as Hungarian strongman.
Election loss
News of leaked intercepts arrived fraught time for Orbán, who lost his reelection bid to Péter Magyar, in a landslide, who ran on steering the country away from Putin’s Russia and into the European fold. (According to EU membership, that’s where Hungary should be anyway.)
Magyar’s party won 138 seats on 53.6% of the vote, compared to Orbán’s 37.8%. According to Al Jazeera, that gives Magyar and allies a supermajority, with the opportunity to amend Hungary’s constitution.
Orbán got routed in the election despite (or perhaps because of) unprecedented lobbying from far-right figures. Marine Le Pen, Germany’s AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, and even Yair Netanyahu, Bibi‘s son, all breezed through Hungary in the past year to show support. (See my Author Footnote for more on that.)
In 2024, J.D. Vance (who also popped by to rally Orbán supporters just before the election) gave an interview to a far-right publication in which he claimed American universities should be “Orbánized” and brought to heel under fascist rule:
“We need to really go after the university bureaucracy focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” he told the publication. “You know, the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary. I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give the a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching.”
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Remember that feeling of euphoria during global New Year celebrations that sweep across time zones? That’s what the Hungarian election feels like: a seismic event that will, if we play it right, cascade around the world like a resulting tsunami. As in, the entire world may have snapped out of a collective stupor to realize fake strongmen are just that: “I alone can fix it” paper tigers who have absolutely no prescriptions for anything other than self-aggrandizement and fattening their own wallets.
Short of Pat Robertson or Ronnie Reagan coming back from the grave, nearly every high-flying right-wing figure came to stump for failed-authoritarian Orbán. But what I find most interesting—and I suggest you bookmark this concept for later—is the famous linkage that Hungary’s far-right, and Orbán himself, share with America’s CPAC (as well as other Christian-nationalist organizations). So closely aligned, in fact, that they share DNA and lots of commonality in disgraced operatives.
Let’s dip into the above-linked piece I wrote about Vance back in mid-2024:
The National Conservatism Conference is an event held in several countries to promote a Christian Nationalist agenda. The conference — and the “National Conservatism” movement — are strongly supported by Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and Vance-backer Peter Thiel. According to Byline Times, Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán’s political director, Balzas Orbán (no familial relation), is also involved in the conference.
Like the Hungarian CPAC covered by the Byline Times, the National Conservatism movement seeks to advance an agenda of Christian Nationalism. Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s political director Balzas Orban is involved in the initiative and was a speaker at the previous London conference in 2019.
Speakers at other NCCs include numerous high-profile Republicans such as Florida’s controversial Governor Ron DeSantis, Senator Marco Rubio, former Trump advisor John Bolton, Senator Josh Hawley who led efforts in the Senate to overturn the Electoral College vote in the 2020 presidential election and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
Chair of the NCC is Christopher DeMuth. DeMuth is a fellow of the Hudson Institute which receives funding from the Koch Foundation and Exxon Mobil. He was also president of the American Enterprise Institute from 1986-2008 which has received $960,000 in funding from Exxon Mobil since 2005 and $2.5 million from the Donor’s Capital Fund in 2010 – an organization enabling rich activists to support conservative causes anonymously.
The “circle of mob” here is quite stunning when you think about all the forces backing a lame horse which, metaphorically of course, ended up at the glue factory. More recently, though, CPAC Hungary 2026, choreographed with great fanfare, was designed as “hard-right slingshot” that would catapult Mr. Orbán into another term.
But the real stinking point here (which I suggest you keep eyes on) is how Hungarian taxpayers picked up the tab for at least $3+ million on 2024 CPAC alone—which is a “conservative” (pun intended) estimate. Matt Schlapp‘s American Conservative Union essentially got a multi-year, multimillion-dollar deal subsidized by Orbán’s state apparatus. And it still didn’t save him.
I’ll bet a fiver that saner heads inside Hungary will be coming for a refund.
