“For the Kremlin, for Moscow, for Putin, Orbán represented a possible collapse of the European project,” Fishman said.
“Today Putin’s main enemy is the West, the European Union as a project that unites European democracies. The calculation was that you could destroy the EU from within. If an ‘electoral autocracy’ emerged inside the EU — one resembling the Russian regime — it could gradually destroy the union from the inside.”
He added that Hungary had been the chief example of the EU’s vulnerability and that those plans and ambitions failed in the election.
“This is, of course, a big blow for Putin,” Fishman said.
Hungary held parliamentary elections on April 12. With 98.94% of votes counted, Peter Magyar’s Tisza party was leading and is projected to win 138 seats, against Orban’s Fidesz getting 55 seats.
In the run-up to the vote, Hungarian media released a series of recorded phone conversations that appear to show close cooperation between senior Hungarian officials and Russia. Bloomberg published a transcript of an October 2025 call between Orban and Putin in which Orban praised the “friendship” between the countries and offered services to the Russian leader. In that transcript, Orban referenced a Hungarian children’s tale in which a mouse frees a lion that previously spared the rodent; the remark reportedly prompted laughter from Putin.
Reports also said Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto
regularly briefed Moscow on the course of EU meetings. One published recording
of a conversation between Szijjarto and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
suggests they worked to delay the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s EU
accession.