Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán suggested Ukraine could be linked to a security incident involving the TurkStream gas pipeline, despite officials in both Moscow and Belgrade saying there is still no evidence identifying who was responsible. The remarks came just days before Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election, where Orbán faces his toughest challenge in 16 years.
“Yesterday they wanted to blow up the gas pipeline, Orbán wrote on Facebook before departing for the border. “We are checking whether everything is in order on the Hungarian side.”
Orbán traveled to the TurkStream gas pipeline on the Hungarian-Serbian border on April 6, a day after Serbian authorities announced they had found two backpacks containing plastic explosives near the conduit in northern Serbia. Serbian prosecutors classified the case as illegal weapons and explosives trafficking linked to suspected sabotage.
Speaking after an emergency session of Hungary’s Defense Council, Orbán stopped short of directly accusing Kyiv, but said Ukraine had “for years been trying to cut Europe off from Russian energy.”
His comments went further than those of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said there was “no reliable evidence” yet on who was responsible. Serbia’s military intelligence also pushed back against efforts to pin the incident on Kyiv, saying it was not true that Ukrainians had tried to organize the sabotage and that forensic analysis was still underway.
Djuro Jovanic, director of Serbia’s Military Security Agency (VBA), said the agency had spent months warning the political leadership that an attack on gas infrastructure was possible, only to be met with “skepticism, disapproval, disagreement.”
Jovanic claimed that an immigrant with military training was behind the alleged sabotage operation.
Orbán has made that broader clash central to his reelection message – framing the contest as a choice between war and peace, Brussels and Budapest – while casting opposition leader Peter Magyar as aligned with Ukraine and the EU.
Analysts say the strategy is aimed at redirecting attention from domestic frustrations over the economy and corruption. Polls published last week showed Magyar’s center-right Tisza party widening its lead over Orbán’s Fidesz party ahead of the April 12 vote.
At a mid-March rally in Budapest, Orban told supporters they had to decide “who will form the government – me or Zelensky,” AFP reported. Hours later, a large Ukrainian flag was unfurled at an opposition march and quickly amplified by pro-government politicians and media. The people holding it were later identified as linked to Fidesz’s youth wing. Rival Peter Magyar mocked the episode, saying: “We said there would be false flag operations, but this is not what we had in mind.”
TurkStream is critical for Hungary because it carries Russian gas through Turkey and Serbia into the country. Any threat to the pipeline therefore gives Orban room to argue that the war next door is not only a foreign policy issue, but a direct risk to Hungarian households and industry.