Recently, an unprecedented campaign has been underway in Hungary to incite hatred against Ukraine. Autocrat Viktor Orban wants his compatriots to vote against Ukraine's accession to the EU. What exactly is happening?
Investigators, fingerprinting, crime scene photos, a drug and ammunition production laboratory - all this is visible in a video in Hungarian. The head of a black wolf is also seen staring into the camera with its teeth.
A man speaks in a deep, menacing voice: “Drug and arms trafficking is the specialty of the Ukrainian mafia. Their cruelty is known all over the world. The war has given them more weapons than ever before. In the next shot, a tank is seen, and then a photo of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appears, and a voiceover is heard: "Brussels is playing with fire. If Ukraine joins the EU, the Ukrainian mafia will be able to reach Hungary unhindered."
Openly pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian course
This and similar clips are currently being played in all pro-government media in Hungary. They are part of Viktor Orbán's campaign against Ukraine's future membership in the EU. Hungarian citizens must vote by June 20 whether they are "for" or "against" Ukraine's accession to the EU. The Hungarian government is against it, which is no surprise to anyone.
For years, Viktor Orbán has been following a pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian course. But his tone and rhetoric towards Ukraine have been getting increasingly harsh. The current campaign far surpasses all previous smear campaigns – starting from the so-called national consultations against illegal migrants to the anti-Semitic smear campaign against the billionaire of Hungarian-Jewish origin George Soros.
Like from Orwell's novel “1984“
Hungary seems to have copied the two-minute hate campaigns from George Orwell's novel “1984“, only in the country today it is not about two minutes, but about 24-hour attacks seven days a week. Their message is: from the East – and more precisely from Ukraine – An apocalyptic threat is looming for Hungary, and the West, represented by Brussels, is pulling the strings.
Posters are plastered all over the country, showing Volodymyr Zelensky looking down on the Hungarian people, with Ursula von der Leyen and Manfred Weber smiling sarcastically behind him. Anti-Ukrainian propaganda is constantly being broadcast on television and radio channels, and social networks are flooded with similar messages. Representatives of the government never tire of explaining at various events how bad Ukraine really is.
Horrifying propaganda lies
The neighboring country presents itself as the “center of drug trafficking and organized crime in Eastern Europe“ - as some kind of "dark zone" populated by barbarians who are either mafia members, or people who "flood Hungary with cheap labor", or criminals who receive Hungarian pensions through fraud. The campaign also suggests that if Ukraine joins the EU, the healthcare and security systems in Hungary will collapse, and "low-quality Ukrainian agricultural products" will "endanger the health of Hungarians". Hungarian farmers will go bankrupt, and every Hungarian family will pay "several hundred thousand forints per year for Ukraine's membership in the EU" - an amount that corresponds to approximately one month's salary.
These propaganda and racist lies are also spread by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán himself, who utters them almost daily. In his weekly radio address on May 2, he said: “Ukraine's membership in the EU will lead to the collapse of the Hungarian economy. Ukraine is a country that cannot support itself. If money does not flow into Ukraine from the West, this country will not be able to exist. Ukrainians are not begging, because they are Ukrainians - they are directly demanding that the European Union support the multi-million Ukrainian army if the United States does not provide money. Because, according to them, they have the right to such an army.“
The Hungarian Prime Minister is losing ground
But why is this whole campaign being waged? The explanation is related to domestic politics. Many Hungarians are already feeling fatigue with Orbán's rule, which is reinforced by the scandals of corruption and arbitrariness of the prime minister and his entourage. In the person of Péter Magyar Orbán, for the first time there is a competitor who leads in the polls ahead of “Fidesz“. Parliamentary elections are coming up next year, and it seems that Orban will lose and is threatened with charges of corruption and abuse of power.
That's why Orban, who has not relinquished power since 2010, is looking for a way to smear Magyar. And he chooses Ukraine for this purpose. Magyar's center-right party "Tisa" is, however, conducting polls among Hungarians on various issues. Regarding Ukraine's membership in the EU, 58% of those polled said they supported it.
The "Fidesz" party decided to use this poll for another attack. The narrative they are pushing is as follows: "Warlike Brussels", which finances Ukraine, bought the "Tisa" party in order to overthrow the "national pro-Hungarian peace government" of Hungary and install a "pro-Ukrainian anti-national war party" in power. It is quite debatable how successful this suggestion will be, since the "Tisa" and Magyar themselves are far from enthusiastic supporters of Ukraine.
Revisionist sentiments
Orban's anti-Ukrainian position also serves the nostalgic, revisionist sentiments of far-right voters in Hungary, who dream of Transcarpathia being part of Hungary again. Parts of this western Ukrainian region belonged to Austria-Hungary before World War I. In his speeches, Orban repeatedly emphasizes the "unity of all Hungarians" and at the same time speaks of Ukraine as a "no man's land" or "a region called Ukraine" - thus hinting at a scenario of Ukraine's disintegration and partition.
In terms of foreign policy, Orbán's anti-Ukrainian stance can also be seen as a declaration of loyalty to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. Good relations with Putin play a particularly important role for Orbán - he has tied Hungary closely to Russia in economic terms. And while Orbán and his government portray Ukraine as a corrupt and mafia-like state, they have repeatedly protected Russian oligarchs who are involved in organized crime and are on EU sanctions lists for war crimes. Orbán's government is even trying to remove oligarchs like Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from Brussels' sanctions lists.
Experts from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are adamant that in the "mafia state Ukraine", as Orbán describes it, there is actually far greater rule of law and a more active fight against corruption than in Hungary. Under the current circumstances, Hungary would probably not even be granted EU candidate status due to serious democratic deficits.