A small black plaque on the facade of No. 99 Andrassy Boulevard in Budapest commemorates an episode from November 1956, when Soviet troops invaded Hungary and crushed the country’s short-lived uprising. Some Soviet soldiers refused to take part in the repression and were executed. The palace across the street, then the Soviet Embassy and now the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Hungary, is where those executions took place. Russia, seeing itself in many ways as the Soviet Union’s successor, has never apologized for 1956, and some Kremlin officials still dismiss the revolution as a “fascist uprising.”
Nearly 70 years later, that same embassy is reported to be serving as a Kremlin-run part-time command center for Hungary’s election campaign. Investigative journalists and leaked parliamentary discussions suggest the Kremlin, in cooperation with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, his government and the ruling Fidesz party, is organizing smear campaigns against opposition candidate Péter Magyar.
The stakes of the April 12 parliamentary election have been framed as a choice between east and west: Hungary’s future alignment with the European Union or with Russia. Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi of Vsquare reported, citing European intelligence sources, that a three-person team of so-called “political technologists” had traveled to Hungary to help Orbán win re-election. In Russia this term denotes the operatives behind Vladimir Putin’s election wins.
Panyi said he received information from three different European intelligence sources that Russian operatives, reportedly supervised by Sergey Kiriyenko, deputy head of the presidential administration, were working to mount a social media campaign targeting Magyar and his Tisza Party. According to Panyi, the Kremlin’s team would bring troll armies, algorithm manipulation and fear-mongering content to strengthen what he described as a weak pro-government social media narrative.
Following Panyi’s reporting, media also covered a confidential session of the National Security Committee in Hungary’s parliament where intelligence warnings about Russian political strategists were discussed. The government reportedly told MPs it could not confirm the operatives’ presence. The Financial Times later reported that the Kremlin had hired the Moscow-based Agency for Social Design (ASP), an IT and disinformation firm under EU and US sanctions, to support Orbán’s campaign. The Russian embassy’s press office and Ambassador Yevgeny Stanislavov attacked Magyar publicly, accusing him of spreading falsehoods.
Magyar responded in a letter to the Russian ambassador, invoking 1956: “We Hungarians are the heirs of the freedom fighters of 1956,” he wrote. “No one can threaten or blackmail us.” He said most Hungarians would vote to stay in the EU and urged Orbán to convene the National Security Council and inform the public about what is allegedly happening.
Orbán’s government maintains unusually close ties with Russia for an EU member. The prime minister denies Kremlin interference in the campaign. Orbán and Putin have met frequently since Orbán first became prime minister in 2010. Hungary remains a major buyer of Russian energy, importing more Russian gas now than before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, despite EU and US sanctions.
In 2025 Putin lauded Orbán as a leader who represents national interests and said Europe could be “reborn” under politicians like him. In early March, Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, traveled to Moscow to meet Putin. As a show of goodwill, Putin handed over two Ukrainian prisoners of war of Hungarian descent who had earlier appeared in Kremlin propaganda videos broadcast by Hungarian state media. Last week Putin warned he could cut energy supplies to the European Union, but added that he would continue to supply “reliable partners” such as Hungary and Slovakia.
Panyi and other observers view such statements as veiled threats intended to bolster Orbán’s electoral prospects: signaling that energy scarcity and economic pain could follow if Hungarians do not vote for a pro-Russian-friendly government. That, critics say, is part of a broader Kremlin effort to influence the outcome in Budapest.
This article originally appeared in German.