Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar has sharply criticized Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at a large campaign rally, claiming Moscow’s spies are trying to influence next month’s elections and likening the premier to a long-serving communist-era ruler for allowing Russian influence in the country.
Addressing the gathering in the southern city of Pécs on Saturday, Magyar urged supporters to remain vigilant ahead of the country’s pivotal parliamentary elections next month.
Organizers said the rally attracted around 10,000 people, with footage on social media showing the city’s main square and surrounding streets filled.
“Everyone must stay alert. If there is a false-flag operation, if a blue-and-yellow [the colors of the Ukrainian flag] drone appears, ask whose interest it serves,” Magyar told the crowd, implying that the government might stage an attack and blame it on Ukraine to scare voters before the election.
Magyar heads the center-right opposition TISZA party, which poses the biggest political challenge yet to the Kremlin-friendly Orbán’s nearly 16-year grip on power.
Magyar warned supporters that the campaign ahead would be “unprecedentedly brutal,” urging them not to fall for provocations.
‘The new János Kádár’
In one of his sharpest attacks, Magyar compared Orbán to János Kádár, the Moscow-backed communist leader who ruled Hungary for more than three decades after Soviet troops crushed the 1956 Hungarian revolution.
Magyar, a former Orbán ally turned rival, accused the nationalist leader, in power since 2010, of allowing Russian agents to operate in the country to influence the April elections.
“Viktor Orbán is the new János Kádár,” Magyar said. “Kádár called in the Russians in 1956. Now agents of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, are stationed in Budapest under diplomatic cover to influence the elections,” he claimed.
Magyar repeatedly led the crowd in chanting: “Russians go home!”
‘One last chance’
The opposition leader also told supporters that Hungary had been given “one last chance” to celebrate the upcoming 70th anniversary of the 1956 uprising as “a free and sovereign country.”
The 1956 revolution began as a student protest in Budapest before turning into a nationwide uprising against Soviet rule. It was crushed by Soviet troops after several weeks of fighting.
Russian agents in Budapest?
In a Facebook post earlier, Magyar claimed that operatives from Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, had arrived in Budapest weeks ago “with the aim and mission of influencing the outcome of the Hungarian election.”
“It is entirely unprecedented for a government facing defeat to try to influence the Hungarian election through foreign intervention for its own benefit,” Magyar wrote, calling on Orbán’s government to “immediately” expel the Russian officers.
Orbán has long been one of the most Kremlin-friendly leaders in the EU. He has repeatedly criticized the bloc’s sanctions on Russia while opposing European aid packages for Ukraine, which continues to fight off Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Most independent opinion polls show Orbán’s right-wing Fidesz party trailing TISZA ahead of the parliamentary election on April 12.
See this report by Ammar Anwer for TVP World here.