Hungary’s prime minister has been accused of plotting false-flag attacks in his own country to whip up fears of Ukrainian sabotage in an attempt to win a pivotal election.
Viktor Orban has claimed that Kyiv is imposing an “oil blockade” by delaying repairs to the Druzhba pipeline, which crosses Ukraine and is Hungary’s main source of Russian oil.
Ukraine says the pipeline was damaged by Russian strikes last month and its repair crews have been injured by further attacks.
But Orban, who is trailing in polls for the parliamentary election on April 12, said this week: “I see that Ukraine is preparing further actions to disrupt the operation of the Hungarian energy system. Therefore, I have ordered the reinforcement of protection for critical energy infrastructure.
“This means that we will deploy soldiers and equipment necessary to repel attacks near key energy facilities.”
Geza Jeszenszky, a former foreign minister, accused Orban of plotting attacks that could be blamed on Ukraine. “He wants to make people believe the threat of war is real, from which only he can save the country.
The Hungarian parliament building in Budapest. The country goes to the polls on April 12
ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“Many of us fear that behind the continuous hysteria may be the intention to use some kind of false-flag operation to claim, completely unfoundedly, that Ukraine is threatening and possibly attacking Hungary,” Jeszenszky told the publication Magyar Hang.
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Orban, who has criticised EU support for Ukraine, also told voters they would be forced to fight in Ukraine if they elected the pro-EU opposition Tisza party, which is narrowly ahead in the polls.
“We see that you, Brussels and the Hungarian opposition, are taking co-ordinated steps to bring a pro-Ukraine government to power in Hungary,” Orban wrote in an open letter to President Zelensky on Thursday.
He recently claimed the EU was a bigger threat than Russia to Hungary. Ukraine and the US met to discuss postwar reconstruction in Geneva on Thursday after Russia pounded Ukraine with 420 drones and 39 missiles on Wednesday night.
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Asked on Thursday about possible Ukrainian attacks in Hungary, Gergely Gulyas, the minister of the prime minister’s office, declined to give details.
Peter Kreko, the director of Hungary’s Political Capital Institute, said it was “suspicious” that Hungary had not informed its Nato allies of the threat.
“This follows months of campaigning in Hungary to depict Ukraine as a growing threat to its security and its elections, so it’s hard not to see this as an attempt to get voters to rally round the flag,” he said.
“It also distracts from bread-and-butter election issues like corruption. We don’t know if it is a pretext for declaring an emergency to postpone the election or just about swaying public opinion, while talk of a false-flag operation is a legitimate fear.”
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Orban has had strong support from President Trump, who has praised his hard line on migration and called him “a truly strong and powerful leader”.
“Donald Trump’s backing does not appear to be helping Orban in the polls,” said Kreko.