Every Thursday, our digest provides you with a comprehensive guide to the week’s most important political developments in Hungary. We will walk with our readers on the historic path to the April 2026 elections. This is a journey unlike anything the region has seen over the past decade and a half.
This week we explore:
- The conflict between Hungary and Ukraine has entered a new phase.
- The saga of sex video blackmail continues.
- Orbán realizes that Erste and Kjell are behind Tisza’s back.
- Only a quarter of Hungarians believe stories that make war scary.
- This week’s polls: Small parties could swing the outcome.
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The conflict between Hungary and Ukraine enters a new phase
Ukraine interfered in Hungarian elections. The opposition Tisza party is colluding with Kiev to cut off Russian oil from Hungary. These have been the ruling Fidesz party’s central election message in recent days, after oil shipments from Russia to Hungary and Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline were halted.
This is not an entirely new development.
Anti-Ukrainian rhetoric has long been a mainstay of Fidesz’s campaign. In recent weeks, billboards across Hungary have claimed that Tisza leader Péter Magyar, along with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, are dumping Hungarians’ money into a “golden toilet”.
Now Orbán’s camp is upping the ante, arguing that a forced withdrawal from Russian oil would lead to higher prices and make caps on the government’s flagship utility bills unsustainable.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delved deeper into the issue at an election rally in Szombathely on February 7, describing Ukraine as a “hostile country” for demanding that Hungary be cut off from Russian energy.
Already in 2025, the Hungarian government was running a fierce anti-Ukraine PR campaign, primarily targeting Ukraine’s accession to the EU.
On Thursday (February 19), pro-government media published reports suggesting that Ukraine was deliberately preparing to shut down the Druzhba pipeline. Russian attacks disrupted shipments at the end of January, but Fidesz-aligned portals echo the government’s insinuations and insist that Kiev has no intention of repairing the pipeline. Pro-government news site Index reported that at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Tisza’s leadership was informed through German intermediaries that Druzhba would not be reopened.
