Hungary to declassify Ukraine funding report
Hungary’s Government will declassify a national security report that the populist prime minister says will prove his main political challenger received illegal financing from Ukraine, a minister said on Thursday.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban faces the biggest political challenge of his career in next month’s elections, where he is trailing in most polls behind his centre-right opponent, Peter Magyar and his Tisza party.
As the April 12 vote approaches, Orban - who maintains cordial relations with the Kremlin - has relied increasingly on an aggressive anti-Ukraine campaign that alleges Kyiv, the European Union and Tisza are part of a conspiracy to oust his government and install one that makes decisions more favourable to Ukraine.
Orban has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine is financing Tisza, without providing evidence for his accusations. In an interview on commercial broadcaster ATV last week, the nationalist leader said “significant” sums had been provided to Tisza by Ukraine for the development of IT applications and voter mobilization efforts.
Magyar denies the allegations. Orban added that his claims were “not assumptions, but facts” he had seen in a national security committee report, and encouraged journalists to request the report be declassified.
“I don’t think the state would withhold this information from you,” Orban said.
On Thursday, Orban’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, told a news conference that “the declassification process is underway,” and that the report would be released “in the foreseeable future.”
With only four weeks until the election and many voters dissatisfied with a chronically stagnant economy, crumbling social services and widespread allegations of corruption, Orban has cast the stakes of the vote as existential for Hungary’s future. The central message of Orban’s pitch is that a new Government would bankrupt Hungary by supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, and send Hungary’s youth to their deaths on the front lines.
The campaign, replete with disinformation, has relied heavily on pictures and videos generated by artificial intelligence.
Orban’s Government has also used public funds to cover the country in billboards featuring an AI-manipulated image of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flashing a sinister smile.
