Hungarian pro-Europe politician Péter Magyar, in a Tuesday statement, said open American backing to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will not prevent Orbán and the ruling pro-Russia Fidesz party from being thrown out of power in upcoming elections.
Madyar leads the EU-friendly Tisza party, the strong favorite in a national parliament vote scheduled on April 12. His comments were published on “X” on Tuesday evening, during the first day of an unprecedented two-day visit to Hungary by US Vice President JD Vance in support of Orbán and against Tisza.
“Hungarian history is not written in Washington, not in Brussels, not in Kyiv, not in Moscow and not in Serbia but in Hungary. Hungarian history is written by Hungarian people,” Madyar said. “I must insist that all international politicians from Hungary to Serbia, from Russia to America, refrain from intervening in the Hungarian elections. We are not a geopolitical playground. This is our country here. The fate of which is to be decided by Hungarian citizens.”
Singling out Vance and White House accusations that NATO member states like Hungary are bad allies to the US because they refused to go to war against Iran on the US side, Madyar said: “To the American Vice President here in Hungary, I say respectfully, if you are already campaigning for Viktor Orbán, do not make Hungarians suffer…The government that will be formed after April 12 will not allow Hungarian soldiers to be sent to Chad or anywhere else, to any other military conflict…the Hungarian regime change will be decided by the Hungarian people in five days’ time,” Madyar said.
During the afternoon preceding Madyar’s evening comments, at a rally in a Budapest soccer stadium, standing next to Orbán, Vance called for Orbán’s re-election, praised Hungarian foreign policy hostile to the EU and Ukraine, and at one point in the proceedings called US President Donald Trump and played Trump’s comments live by speakerphone to the crowd.
“I love Hungary and I love Viktor. I’m telling you he’s a fantastic man. I’m a big fan of Viktor. I’m with him all the way, the United States is with him all the way,” the US leader said.
“We have got to get Viktor Orbán reelected as prime minister of Hungary, don’t we?” the US Vice President told a crowd of about 5,000. “Then, my friends, go to the polls in the weekend. Stand with Viktor Orbán, because he stands for you.”
Prior to Vance’s visit to Hungary, there was no precedent for a sitting US Vice President’s travel to another country to speak in public in favor of an individual candidate in a national election, in US history.
The last time a US president visited another country during its election campaign, in any capacity, was in 1996 when Democrat Bill Clinton traveled to Israel. During meetings with incumbent Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Clinton spoke favorably of Peres and his Labor party as reliable US allies, but did not take a position on which political party or candidates he or the US supported in Israel’s election campaign in progress at the time.
During his soccer stadium appearance, Vance reiterated longstanding Trump regime narratives blaming Ukraine for purportedly undermining the peace process in the Russo-Ukraine War, and suggested that Ukrainian spy networks were – purportedly – seeking to interfere with free and fair elections in the US and Hungary alike.
“We’re certainly aware that there are elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services that try to put their thumb on the scale of American elections, on Hungarian elections. This is just what they do,” Vance said.
Vance also repeated favorite Orbán claims that the non-resolution of the Russo-Ukraine War is mostly the European Union’s fault, and insisted that of all European states and statesmen, Hungary and Orbán have worked hardest to bring peace to Europe.
“The seeds of this conflict [I.e. the Russo-Ukraine War, the biggest conventional war seen in Europe since World War II] were actually planted well before the fighting started. And they were planted when European leaders decided that they were going to go so deep into a particular energy economy that they were going to cut themselves off from oil and natural gas that came from the East [i.e. sold to Europe by Russia],” Vance said. “Viktor [Orbán] has been better than anybody at helping us understand what it is the Ukrainians need and what it is that the Russians need in order to achieve peace.”
Vance made no reference to a ballooning scandal in Hungary that the Kremlin for years had exploited a backchannel to confidential EU planning and security information via Péter Szijjártó, Orbán’s Foreign Minister, who allegedly turned over the materials to Russia.
Audio transcripts of telephone conversations between Szijjártó and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, made public via a joint investigative report published on March 31, 2026, by outlets including VSquare and The Insider, seemed to document Szijjártó’s energetic support to Russian clandestine operations. Tisza politicians have called for Szijjártó to be investigated for treason. Szijjártó has denied wrongdoing and suggested he is the victim of illegal wiretapping.
Per recent public opinion polls, Madyar and his opposition Tisza party are in a solid lead over Orbán’s Fidesz–KDNP alliance, with polling averages showing Tisza on track to take around 49-50% of the 199 parliamentary seats up for grabs, and Fidesz around 39-40%. Most forecasts project Tisza will take control of the legislature outright or in coalition with minority factions, and that chances are high that Orbán’s 16-year lock on power in Hungary will end.
Official Kyiv has denied that it interferes in the Hungarian election process and said that Orban’s repeated accusations that Ukraine is run by a non-democratic, war-obsessed government are neither neighborly nor helpful to bilateral relations.
At times, Ukrainian tempers have boiled over. One of the sharpest flare-ups took place in February 2026 during the Munich Security Conference, at which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who works out daily, accused his rotund Hungarian counterpart of overeating instead of doing Hungary’s part to protect Europe from Russian aggression.
“There is even [in European politics] a particular ‘Viktor’ who can think about grow his belly, but can’t think about how to increase the size of his army to stop Russian tanks from returning to the streets of Budapest [as in 1956],” Zelensky said. “He should be thankful to the Ukrainian people, who are holding the fighting lines of Europe against Russia.”
Orbán, in comments reported by the Russian news agency TASS on Feb. 14, shot back that as long as his government was in office, Hungary would veto any Ukrainian attempt to join the EU.
“This debate is not about me, and it is not about you [Zelensky]. It is about the future of Hungary, Ukraine, and Europe. That is precisely why you cannot become a member of the European Union,” he said.
Madyar during campaigning, has avoided taking a firm position on whether his party, if elected, would reverse Orbán government veto threats to Ukrainian membership in the EU and release of €90 billion ($105 billion) in European aid to Ukraine, albeit without Hungarian contribution. When pressed by reporters, Madyar has said his party’s policy on Ukraine would be to support Hungarian national interest.