Magnicide and insult simulations: Putin puts all the meat on the grill to keep Orbán

MoscowIn Moscow, alarms have sounded. After sixteen years, Viktor Orbán's continuity at the helm of Hungary is at risk. Vladimir Putin fears losing his great ally in the European Union, a thorn in the side for Brussels' support of Kyiv and a stubborn buyer of repudiated Russian gas and oil. To try to avoid this, several media outlets have warned that the Kremlin has launched an operation to influence the elections of April 12. Actions that include from the deployment of spies in Budapest to disinformation campaigns on social networks and even thinking about the staging of a false attack against the current prime minister to boost his popularity.

According to the investigative media VSquare, Putin has entrusted the Hungarian portfolio to Sergey Kiriyenko, his deputy chief of staff and the architect of the Russian electoral system, which guarantees the obedience of all candidates to the president. Kiriyenko already tested his tactics in the last legislative elections in Moldova, last September, where he failed in his attempt to prevent the triumph of the pro-European bloc. Nevertheless, the modus operandi

is expected to be the same. At least three members of Moscow's military intelligence have settled in the Russian embassy in Budapest, with diplomatic passports, from where they coordinate the manipulation strategy on social networks.

The campaign is not carried out directly by the Kremlin, but by the Agency for Social Design, an opaque entity dedicated to political influence, ultimately supervised by Kiriyenko, who replaced Yevgeny Prigozhin's farms of bots and cyber trolls. According to the

Financial Times, the intention is to present Orbán as a strong leader with global friends, such as Donald Trump, in contrast to his rival, Péter Magyar, who is portrayed as a puppet of Brussels without external support. At the same time, however, care must be taken that Russian interference is not at all evident, as it could be counterproductive for the prime minister's party. The responsibility for disseminating this narrative falls to pro-government autochthonous agents.

The opposition Russian media The Insider has already collected some of the false information that Russian hackers have spread online in recent days. Many of them seek to exploit the clash between Orbán and Volodymyr Zelensky. For example, it is circulating a headline from a non-existent interview of the Ukrainian president in the publication Politico in which he calls Hungarian voters "retarded". Also a supposed video from Euronews, citing Human Rights Watch, denounces more than a thousand attacks by Ukrainian refugees against Hungarian citizens across Europe.

False assassination attempts

These same bots have gone further by distributing videos about alleged assassination attempts against Orbán and coup threats, an extreme that experts consider unprecedented. A news story falsely attributed to Deutsche Welle claimed that a group of Ukrainian refugees had died trying to detonate an explosive device near the Hungarian prime minister's office. Another video, with the logo of Moldovan television, reported on alleged messages from Ukrainians inciting Hungarian citizens to take up arms to overthrow Orbán.

The fantasy of an attack against the Hungarian prime minister is based on a proposal from Russian external intelligence (SVR) revealed by the

Washington Post. According to the newspaper, the spies suggested orchestrating this staging as a "turning point" that would "radically alter the course of the campaign" and catapult Orbán. The precedent would be found in the assassination attempts against Trump or against the Slovak Prime Minister, Robert Fico, a close associate of the Hungarian. This is not the first time the SVR has fabricated non-existent threats to destabilize neighboring countries. Just recently, on the eve of the last elections in Moldova, it claimed that NATO was preparing an imminent invasion from Romania.

Both Russia and Hungary flatly deny these accusations. The Kremlin asserts they are "falsifications," while the Hungarian government dismisses any Russian interference, attributing it to a campaign by the left and a "regrettable attempt to divert attention from the Ukrainian president's threats." Previously, Zelenski had hinted that he would give Orbán's address to his soldiers so that they could "speak to him in their language," amidst the conflict over Ukraine's decision to prevent the passage of Russian oil to Hungary. These were words that the prime minister has used to fuel antagonism with the Ukrainian president, to cut off the gas supply to Kyiv, and to strengthen his pro-Russian position in the war.

The Hungarian blockade on the European loan of 90,000 million euros to Ukraine, Orbán's latest obstacle to EU military support for Kyiv, is one of the factors that make him an indispensable partner for Putin. The Russian president does not want to give up the privilege of having a mole in Brussels who occasionally leaks the discussions of the Twenty-Seven to Moscow and, without hiding it, works in favor of his interests. That is why the Kremlin is willing to do anything and will go all out to save its ally. However, most independent polls give an advantage to Péter Magyar and his Tisza party, although with very variable differences, between 3 and 20 points. Despite this, some surveys still give victory to Viktor Orbán, in an election that is shaping up to be the most open in the country in sixteen years.