How sex tapes and fake assassination plots have shaped Hungary’s wild election | News Politics

The UK’s most recent general election in 2024 certainly contained its share of drama – think Rishi Sunak’s D-Day blunder, or Nigel Farage’s dramatic return to the fray.

But for truly bizarre politics, Hungary really takes the Dobosh.

On April 12, the eastern European nation will go to the polls for its first parliamentary elections since 2022.

Last time around, incumbent Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – a strong ally of Donald Trump with a distinctive centre-parted haircut – achieved a romping victory for his party Fidesz.

He’s spent the last four years yanking his country further to the right and doing his best to stop support being sent to Ukraine in its fight against Russian invaders.

However, a worsening Hungarian economy has hampered his chances of scoring a fifth term as PM.

Polls suggest his party has been overtaken by a relatively new challenger called Tisza, which has rocketed in popularity since Orbán critic Péter Magyar took over in July 2024.

Magyar – whose surname literally translates to ‘Hungarian’ – was once a loyal member of Fidesz, but resigned in February 2024 with a blistering attack on Orbán’s record.

Unsurprisingly, there is no love lost between the two men, which may explain why the latest election has become a little… messy.

Even before campaigning had fully kicked off, Magyar attracted international headlines with claims his opponents were plotting to blackmail him with a sex tape.

The opposition leader said Fidesz was ‘planning to release a recording, recorded with secret service equipment and possibly faked, in which my then-girlfriend and I are seen having intimate intercourse’.

The accusation stemmed, he said, from a picture of a bedroom that had been shared with journalists, captioned ‘coming soon’.

Fidesz denied any involvement in such a plot, and no such video appears to have been published.

Then, on Sunday, the Washington Post published an explosive story suggesting the stakes in the election were being felt far beyond Hungary’s borders.

As mentioned above, Orbán has made a name for himself as a rare voice opposing support for Ukraine within the European Union and Nato.

That has endeared him to Moscow, who allegedly offered some help to tip the scales of the election in his favour – with extraordinarily melodramatic methods.

Citing an internal report for Russia’s foreign intelligence service the SVR, the US newspaper said officers considered a strategy they called ‘the Gamechanger’.

It involved, bluntly, ‘the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orbán’.

Their alleged plan may have been inspired by the impact of the attempted killing of Donald Trump during the 2024 US presidential election, which resulted in an iconic picture and rallied support.

This report was dismissed by Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó as ‘insane conspiracy theories that are beyond imagination’.

Questions have also been asked about the decision to appoint a former interpreter for Vladimir Putin to a top role monitoring the parliamentary election.

Daria Boyarskaya will help co-ordinate the work of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe overseeing the democratic process next month.

But in a previous life, she worked for years in Russia’s foreign ministry and helped to interpret meetings including one between Putin and Donald Trump in 2019, according to the Guardian.

The choice was criticised by rights group the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, but OSCE secretary general Roberto Montella said Ms Boyarskaya retains his ‘full trust and confidence’.

A spokesperson for the group added: ‘The Russian government does not pay Ms Boyarskaya’s salary, nor has it done it so in the past.’

Meanwhile, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused Orbán’s team of ‘inform[ing] Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail’ in an X post on Sunday.

Political news site Politico reported the EU was limiting the amount of confidential material passed to Hungary’s leaders out of concern it would end up in the hands of the Kremlin.

János Bóka, the Hungarian Europe Minister, described the story as ‘fake news’.

And Russia is not the only source of foreign support for Orbán and his government ahead of the crucial elections – President Trump has his back too.

In a video message shown at a conference on Saturday, Trump said: ‘He’s a fantastic guy and it’s such an honour to endorse him.’

In less than two weeks, we’ll know whether that had an impact – but who knows what could happen before then?

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