By László Andor, Secretary General for the Foundation for European Progressive Studies.
From the very start of the Russia—Ukraine war, Hungary has been seen as an outlier in the EU, due to the ostensibly pro-Moscow pivot of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He took decisions against Hungarian arms deliveries to Ukraine, or even just to allow such transports through our country. He did not visit Kyiv for very long (2,5 years after 24/2), contrary to many other leading European politicians. He has waged a propaganda campaign against anti-Russian sanctions and visited Moscow as only EU head of government for the funeral of Mikhail Gorbachev (September 3rd, 2022)s. Not even his foreign minister met his Ukrainian opposite number since the invasion for almost two years, and Orbán’s ferocious media empire peddles pro-Kremlin language in shifts.
However, the case is more complex than just pointing to Orbán as a traitor, or his functioning as an agent, spy or supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ahead of the Alaska summit of Trump and Putin, Orbán was the only EU leader not signing a common declaration in support of Ukraine’s position, while after the summit Budapest was among the cities mentioned as potential venues for direct Russia-Ukraine talks (potentially with the involvement of the US). Orbán never develops and maintains a policy without knowing that it meets the expectations of his core constituency and potentially a much wider supporter base within Hungary and sometimes beyond. Therefore, the issue in question also requires a thorough analysis from the perspectives of both domestic and international politics.
The significance of the 2022 April elections
The outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian war coincided with the parliamentary election campaign in Hungary. While foreign policy had not been among the top campaign issues till then, the Russian invasion of Ukraine made a big effect on the Hungarian campaign in the last five weeks and turned out to be decisive factor. Against the unity candidate of the broad opposition Péter Márki-Zay, Orbán successfully played the “peace and security card”, and the pro-government media regularly called the opposition “pro war”.
For many ordinary voters, the understanding was that “Orbán will keep us out of this war while Márki-Zay would drag us into it” and this turned out to be a crucial argument. Some who had considered voting against Orbán decided to vote for him at the last minute and even more decided just to stay at home. The opposition’s narrow focus on gigantic Fidesz corruption and Orbán’s alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin energized committed voters but failed to bring new ones (since these issues appear to be less relevant for ordinary people than material gains).
After the elections, Hungarian politics and public opinion remained divided in Hungary. The most important political office holder of the opposition, Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony did visit Kyiv with other capital city mayors from the Visegrad countries (January 2023), and also the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine, which for a millennium formed part of Hungary and still is home of a 150 thousand strong ethnic Hungarian community.
From the very start, Fidesz framed this war differently than the US led Western alliance. They have been referring to “the fight of two Slavic nations” (and not to the clash of democracies and autocracies of the planet). While in 2022-23 much of Europe and North America spoke about the necessity of a victory over Russia, Orbán continued to bet on Russia not losing the war (even if not winning it). The importance of the negotiating table as opposed to the battlefield has remained a central piece in the narrative of Orbán and his camp, reflecting continued support for this interpretation among the Fidesz voting base and much of the wider population.
The duplicity of Orbán’s Ukraine policy
The European Union, of which Hungary has been a member since 2004, has played a coordinating role to support Ukraine and sanction Russia from February 2022 onwards. As part of the European Council, Viktor Orbán voted for all sanction packages, and participated in the provision of financial and humanitarian support. What he has not done is supplying military support, which may not matter too much for the total armament effort of Ukraine (due to the size of Hungary), but still is seen as a betrayal, not least because it also is coupled with an ideology that markedly deviates from the EU mainstream.
One could make a defensive point which is that Hungary has not been very famous for having a strong military or a significant armament industry. On the other hand, many supportive governments participated in the collective efforts even with minimal deliveries, ensuring that Ukraine can collect what it needs adding up from small donations if necessary. Gestures also matter, but here even the gesture was denied.
There have been two well-known cases when Orbán managed to alter the content of sanctions packages. One notorious case was about dropping from the list Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, an ardent supporter of Putin’s neo-imperialist strategy. Orbán made the point that sanctions should connect with politics and not with religion. The second case was more material: allowing landlocked countries receiving crude oil from Russia through pipelines to continue to do so, given the greater technical difficulties to switch from one source to another if we compare these mainly landlocked countries (also Czechia, Slovakia and Austria) to others which mostly import through their ports. Hungary also belongs to the camp that draws a red line when it comes to potentially including nuclear cooperation in the list of sanctions.
Orbán also has been mindful that many Hungarians look at the political landscape of neighboring countries, including Ukraine, through the lens of the minority question, which is partly the source of the current conflict. There are many in Hungary who have been paying attention to the concerns of ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine who felt culturally oppressed at the time of rising Ukrainian nationalism. For those who are particularly sensitive to this question, it is more difficult to portray the Russo-Ukrainian hostility as a fight between good and evil.
Hungary—Ukraine parallels
Nations close to the territory of Russia have been expected to line up in support of Ukraine out of solidarity based on shared history of having been invaded or oppressed by Russia. Poles recalled the periods when their country was partitioned by Russia and other greater powers. Baltic statelets, with their experience of incorporation in the Russian Empire first and then the Soviet Union, took a position in the frontline of the propaganda war.
However, such expectations may ignore how complex the history of Central Europe has been, which does not necessarily allow for black or white conclusions. Parallels can be drawn between different historic situations, but history does not use copy-paste. Besides, various views on various chapters of history mix with various assessments of the current geopolitical reality, which eventually allows for diverse judgments on the current war.
The general expectation is that smaller nations in the proximity of Russia would share an anti-imperialist sentiment, and out of similarities in their historical experience, they would display similar if not identical reactions. This assumption partly works in the Hungarian context but at the same time there are some contradictory considerations as well. One can draw a parallel between Hungarian and Ukrainian history, but this does not necessarily work out according to the expectations.
The Russian Empire acquired much of the present time Ukrainian territory in the 18th century, just as the Habsburg Empire annexed Hungary fully in the 18th century. In both cases the acquisition of territory took place at the expense of the Ottoman Empire which at that time was in decline. Hungarians fought the Austrians for independence (especially in 1848-49) in vain, but the best time for economic and political development for Hungary came after the famous compromise with the Austrians in 1867. In other words, in Hungarian history the compromise with the oppressor (Austria) is not necessarily a negative concept.
Further, there is a notion in circulation, due to the centrality of Trianon in Hungary’s 20th century history, suggesting that a multiethnic country can be subject of internal and external pressures, and eventually either disintegrate or be partitioned. Treating ethnic minorities badly increases the risk of being destabilized, which was a factor playing a role in the case in Hungary before Trianon, and arguably can also be observed in our time. In the 1990s, it was common to speak in Hungary about the Trianon of Serbia. Similarly, the current war in Ukraine can also be viewed as a Trianon of the Ukrainians, leading to an unjust peace (which the Hungarians had to endure after 1920.
Hungary and Russia in conflict
The recent history of Hungary-Russia relations serves with many examples of conflict. However, this was not always the pattern. When fighting for independence (from Austria, after the expulsion of the Ottomans), Ferenc Rákóczi, the Prince of Transylvania, tried to get support from Tsar Peter I during his liberation war against the Habsburgs (1703-11). One century later, during the Napoleonic wars, the Hungarian nobility decided to stay loyal to Austria, and was in conflict with France, but not with Russia.
When Hungarians launched another war of liberation against the Austrians (1848-49), it was eventually put down with the help of the Russian army, which came to the rescue of the Habsburg Empire fulfilling a commitment they had made in 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic wars. The qualifier here is that the fights against the invading Russians in 1849 took place on territories to the East of the contemporary borders. And the former Prime Minister of Hungary and the 13 generals of the war of liberation were executed by the Austrians, and not the Russians.
In 1945, Hungary was liberated by the Soviet Red Army from the occupation by Nazi Germany. Most Hungarians resented the continuing Soviet occupation and domination in the four decades after WWII. However, Hungarian nationalist views also held that the West “gave us” to the Russians at the Yalta Conference (February 1945). Linked to this is the notion that in 1956 the West (US, Radio Free Europe etc…) encouraged but did not support the armed uprising of Hungarians against the Soviet intervention. This is being compared to current Ukrainian situation, when some Western politicians (like Boris Johnson) explicitly refer to it as a “proxy war”.
The impact of historic experience on contemporary national psyche and political judgment would require deeper research. In case of Hungary, this would need to pay attention not only to the legacy of 1956, but also very important other episodes like the fate of the Hungarian Second Army during World War II. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), Hungary’s Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy decided to send a 200 thousand strong Hungarian army to aid the Wehrmacht campaign in the East, more precisely in the battle of Stalingrad. The false promise to these people was that their fight will earn the gratitude of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and secure the return of Hungarian lands lost after World War I.
This was not only a national sacrifice serving the evil interest of someone else, but the cruel behavior of Hungarian soldiers against the Soviet population has been understood to be a factor that could not have generated a benevolent approach from the Soviets subsequently (whether we speak about politicians around negotiating tables or solders occupying our country following the liberation from the Third Reich.
Russia and other evils in Hungarian history
Altogether, the average Hungarian may feel no love or have high opinion on Russians. But in a historic experience of the suppression by Russia (1849) or the Soviet Union (1956) must be put next to other tragedies: the destruction of the Hungarian Second Army, the Holocaust, Trianon, colonization by the Habsburgs, or the 150 years of Ottoman rule. If we compare the damage inflicted by all these cases of foreign intervention or domination, the ones for which the Russians are responsible do not stand out.
Fundamentally, modern Hungarian nationalism has been anti-Austrian, and not anti-Russian (as opposed to the cases of Poland or Western Ukraine). This is reflected in arts, literature and all types of political symbolism. If one looks around at the square outside the Hungarian parliament, you find two main monuments there: one to Count Ferenc Rákóczi (Prince of Transylvania), and another one to Lajos Kossuth (Minister and Regent). Both fought Habsburg colonialism (the first in 1703-11 and the second in 1848-49).
Although Hungary ended up on the wrong side in both World Wars I and II, the national consensus is that we were dragged into WWI by the Austrians and the Germans and duped into WWII by the irredentist double act of Hitler and Horthy. The feeling that it is better to stay away from great power conflict is not new. Whatever the pretext, most Hungarian people are rather suspicious if greater powers want us to be in conflict with this or that adversary.
If you ask Hungarians what the greatest tragedies for us were (in 20th century), more right-wing people would say the outcome of World War One (including Trianon) and more left-wing people would say the outcome of World War Two (including the Holocaust). In first France and in second Germany is implicated. 1956 does not come near in either case what concerns the number of victims or further implications. The memory of 1956 hurts Hungarians but it rarely mobilized large numbers in the last 30 years when celebrating the anti-Soviet uprising has been free. Maybe most Hungarians don’t particularly like Russians, but they put things into perspective and value the opportunities of peaceful and pragmatic cooperation, to the extent that opportunity may come back at all.
The failure of 1956 to mobilize
Various nations may look at a current conflict through their own experience and form an opinion under such influence. Czechs and Slovaks surely recalled the suppression of the 1968 Prague Spring when they saw Putin’s tanks rolling into Ukraine in 2022, which boosted solidarity with Ukraine and resentment against Russia. Hungarians supposedly have similar reactions if they think about 1956. However, such automaticity has not been observed.
In 1956, to invade Hungary and suppress the anti-Stalinist uprising, the Soviet Union invoked the Warsaw Pact that had been signed one year earlier. The intervention of the Soviet army in 1956 cost over 2000 lives and the repression that followed was severe (over 200 people were executed and about 200 thousand emigrated). Western observers are indeed perplexed how can someone so close to Putin, like Orbán, paint himself to be a man of peace? Why Hungarians, with the memory of 1956, do not react stronger against the invasion and show more solidarity with Ukraine? With a closer look at Hungarian history and society, this is not so difficult to understand.
No doubt, the Soviet military intervention to suppress the Hungarian uprising in 1956 was brutal, but the assumption that all further developments would be determined by this dark episode is wrong and delusional. Hungarians had several heroic uprisings in history and 1956 is just one of those. But “golden ages” in Hungarian history were usually linked to compromise with colonial powers (late 19th century and the 1960s—70s). After 1956, those Hungarians who emigrated lived a better life in Western Europe, North America or Australia. But from the early 1960s onwards, Hungarians who stayed also experienced prosperity and step by step liberalization, known as “goulash communism”. For many who grew up in those times the constantly improving living standards are more important than which army is stationed in the country.
It should also be noted that in 1956 the revolutionary government of Imre Nagy declared neutrality of the country (i.e. leaving the Warsaw Pact but not joining anything else), and this remained a national wish until the early 1990s. After the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the accession to NATO was framed as part of a broader Euro-Atlantic integration. The referendum that took place in 1997 supported NATO membership with an 85.3 % majority, but at a relatively low turnout (49.2 %).
The final reason for 1956 not working particularly well for generating pro-Ukrainian solidarity in Hungary is that the invading Soviet army by definition included many Ukrainians. From a Hungarian perspective, it is hard to see a kind of civilizational difference between Russians and Ukrainians. And while contact with Russian people, except for some tourists, has not been a significant part of the everyday life for Hungarians in the last 30 years, the experience with Ukrainians has been more intense, and is not particularly positive. The reason is partly the extensive Ukrainian shadow economy, but also the increasingly harsh treatment of the Hungarian minority in the Transcarpathian region since the start of ethno-nationalist state building.
A broader regional perspective
When in Western Europe people commenting Russia—Ukraine issues mention “Eastern” countries, they typically consider the Polish—Baltic views representative of the Eastern EU member states. This way of thinking is obviously flawed. While Orbán and his government can rightly be considered as an outlier in the EU as a whole (because of their attitude to specific EU actions), but if we only focus on the South-East European region, Orbán appears as a bolder and more influential version of a more general pattern.
Overall, South of the Carpathians peoples are less Russophobic than in the Baltic region. This is due to a few historic reasons. Most importantly, while the Baltic three and partly also Poland were once incorporated in the Russian Empire, this was not the case South of the Carpathian Mountains. South-East Europe does not share the same historic neurosis which is a feature in the Baltic region, and such reminiscences cannot be exploited for militaristic purposes today.
Russia has been a factor in the history of the South-Eastern European region but neither in an outstanding way nor particularly negatively. A lengthy period of history to the South of the Carpathians was characterized by a triple hegemonic rivalry with the Habsburg, the Ottoman and the Russian empires as competitors. For some, and especially for Orthodox Slavs (Serbs and Bulgarians, Russia was not an oppressor but a liberator who helped keeping Catholic or Ottoman invaders or occupiers out. Greeks, in the shadow of the Ottoman Empire (and then Turkey), also looked at Russia with sympathy.
Consequently, people in this region are more skeptical about propagandistic statements which suggests that “Russia would invade the whole of Europe” or that “the Ukrainians are fighting for us all”. From this point of view, Orbán is more pro-Putin than pro-Russia, while the latter would apply to wider segments of the population in Slovakia, Serbia and Bulgaria. Leaders like Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and Croatian president Zoran Milanovic won elections (and reelection) while it was widely known what views they held about Russia and the war in Ukraine.
Presidential elections in Moldova (2024) and Romania (2024-25) also put a divided society on display. The shock result of the aborted 2024 presidential election of Romania should not be explained by a single factor. However, it is almost certain that among several other issues (regional underdevelopment, anti-elitist sentiment, Tik-Tok influence etc…) public aversion to dominant foreign policy posture of wartime Romania in certain parts of the country did help shifting support behind the maverick Călin Georgescu first, and then the far-right AUR leader George Simion in the Spring period.
Besides, the Romanian and Croatian examples also indicate that in (direct) presidential elections many people participate who do not necessarily take part in the parliamentary elections, and the preferences of these incremental voters can differ from the mainstream, especially on foreign policies. In such circumstances the presidential election can be an opportunity to send a message to the entire political class and bring forward a kind of anti-systemic political opinion, without the need to develop such views into proper governmental alternatives.
The question of EU membership
Since 2022 Ukraine has been candidate for EU membership. While this was originally seen as a gesture and an encouragement to fight the war against Russia, the European Commission kept the ball rolling, and political actors including governments had to form a position. Ukraine’s EU membership has also become a major theme in Hungary’s domestic politics. So much that Orbán organized a “national consultation” about the topic. This was to further raise, if possible, anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the country, which would help uniting his camp and dividing the opposition.
Ahead of the 2024 European Parliament (and municipal) elections, a new populist party emerged in Hungary (Tisza) under the leadership of a former Fidesz-apparatchik, Péter Magyar. Tisza joined the EPP group in the European Parliament, which has been consistently supportive of the war in Ukraine. Once emerging as a political leader, Magyar quickly visited Ukraine, although his original rhetoric did not deviate much from Orbán’s regarding the origin and the nature of the war (referring to the conflict of two Slavic nations turned into a proxy war).
The reported outcome of Orbán’s consultation was 95% rejection of Ukraine’s EU membership, which Orbán announced on the eve of the European Council meeting in June 2025. This was not a surprise, since in the “information campaign” that accompanied the consultation only the costs and risks of a possible accession were emphasized, and not a word was spoken about the potential benefits for the EU. The rejection of Ukraine’s EU membership became a main theme of Orbán’s subsequent public speeches on foreign policy. In order to deflect this offensive, Magyar has avoided echoing the talks about fast tracking Ukraine’s EU membership. While Fidesz continued to use Ukraine’s future membership in the EU for scaremongering, the whole opposition preferred to sideline the issue hoping that the significance of the issue in domestic political debates would diminish.
Meanwhile inside Ukraine the share of those hoping for NATO and EU membership declined sharply, and the broader EU debate on further Eastern enlargement has also changed. Historically, West European countries developed enlargement fatigue after the 2004 “big bang”, while Easterners remained enthusiastic in order to bring in their aspiring neighbors. In 2022, there was consensus in the EU about turning Ukraine and Moldova into candidates. Since then, the earlier asymmetry seemed to turn around completely.
The West became more pro-enlargement for geopolitical reasons, while neighbors of Ukraine developed some skepticism, basically for 3 reasons. One is the dispute on grain import from Ukraine with potential consequences in case of an accession. The second is the expected effect of Ukraine on the EU budget (especially cohesion and agricultural policy). And the third one is the specific historic grievances (the case of the Volhynian massacres standing out and putting a shadow over Polish-Ukrainian relations). For these reasons, Orbán appears less and less as an outlier what concerns opinions on Ukraine’s future EU membership.
Conclusions
Orbán already on previous occasions claimed that he was not isolated among EU leaders, but he was ahead of the curve. Being an outlier for him is sometimes a badge of honor, as long as he can later say that he is often a maverick who becomes a trend setter at a later stage, once developments prove that he had more foresight than many other leaders.
Since the Alaska meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Orbán has been using this argument again in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. He can claim that he had been right all along, and the outcome of the conflict would be decided at the negotiating table and not the battlefield. He was practically excommunicated for this view, but this is how things turned out – this will now also form part of the Fidesz campaign rhetoric ahead of the 2026 parliamentary elections.
All this just means that while history teaches a lot of lessons to all nations, it has a limited power to explain current developments and motivate actions and reactions. Primarily, we should rely on the sense of international law to understand why Vladimir Putin’s aggression has to be condemned, and why the rulers of the Kremlin have to be held responsible for the tremendous bloodshed and destruction in Ukraine as well as its consequences for the rest of Europe and around the world.
As the world is moving towards multipolarity, there are broader lessons here for the wider European public as well. After the Russo-Ukrainian war, the EU will need a new Eastern policy, for security but also to reduce the costs of warfare. Such policy can be informed by historic experience but ideally without propagandistic distortions of Central and Eastern European history. Sound geostrategic analysis would need to play a greater role.
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László Andor is a senior fellow at Hertie School, Berlin and former European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (2010-2014). After stepping out of the Commission, he became Secretary General of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies.