Orbán picks fight with Brussels and Kyiv to salvage election campaign

Viktor Orbán is losing. With the 12 April election six weeks away, Hungary's prime minister of fifteen years trails his principal rival, Péter Magyar, by roughly eight percentage points in published polling. The deficit has forced Orbán into a familiar playbook: manufacture a crisis abroad, then paint the opposition as complicit. This time the stage is Brussels and Kyiv. The prop is a €90 billion European Union financial package for Ukraine, agreed at a European Council meeting in December, which Budapest has now blocked. The accusation is that Ukraine is dragging its feet on repairing the Druzhba pipeline that delivers Russian oil to Hungarian refineries.

The pipeline lever

The Druzhba pipeline has long been a strategic asset for Hungary, supplying crude from Russia via Ukraine. Repairs to the Ukrainian section have been a recurring friction point since the full-scale invasion began. Orbán's government now argues that Kyiv is deliberately slowing work, threatening Hungarian energy security. The timing of the blockade, weeks before an election Orbán looks likely to lose, has drawn immediate scepticism in European capitals. The €90 billion package, structured as loans backed by the EU budget, is critical to keeping Ukraine's government functioning through 2025. Holding it hostage over a pipeline dispute that predates the current campaign looks, to many observers, like domestic politics dressed up as foreign policy.

Orbán has not left the messaging to ministers. He took to Facebook on Monday to fuse the international standoff with the domestic race. "In line with Brussels and Kyiv, instead of a national government, they [Tisza] want to bring a pro-Ukrainian government to power in Hungary," he wrote. "That is why they are not standing up for the interests of Hungarian people and Hungary." A follow-up post warned that a Tisza victory would mean "chaos, fuel shortages, and gasoline price increases before the elections" because the opposition had "sided with Zelenskyy, against the Hungarian people."

Magyar's economic counter-punch

Magyar, a 44-year-old former Fidesz insider who broke with the party last year, has built his lead on a single theme: the corruption, mismanagement and cronyism he says define Orbán's rule. He did not take the bait on Ukraine or Brussels. Instead he replied that fuel was cheaper in Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, and that Orbán's economic record, not foreign conspiracies, was driving up costs for Hungarian households and businesses. "Orbán does not govern effectively and shows no interest in the continuously deteriorating situation of Hungarian citizens or businesses," Magyar said. "Instead, he chooses to lie, incite hatred, and burden the country with some of the highest taxes in Europe."

The exchange reveals the trap Orbán is trying to spring. He wants the campaign to be a referendum on loyalty: Hungary versus Brussels, sovereignty versus submission. Magyar wants it to be a referendum on competence: fifteen years of Fidesz versus a credible alternative. So far Magyar has succeeded in keeping the focus domestic. Whether that holds for six more weeks is the central question of the race.

The pro-European who isn't

The irony that Orbán's attacks elide is that Magyar is hardly the unalloyed pro-European, pro-Ukrainian figure the prime minister portrays. In the European Parliament, Tisza voted against the €90 billion Ukraine loan. Magyar has publicly opposed accelerated EU membership for Kyiv. At his first press conference as an MEP in 2024 he opposed sending weapons to Ukraine. In an interview with Politico that year he described Tisza as pro-EU but candid about the union's shortcomings, rejected a European "superstate", and said he had no "friends" in the Parliament.

This positioning puts Magyar to the right of Orbán on some Ukraine questions, a fact that complicates the prime minister's narrative. It also reflects a Hungarian electorate that is broadly sceptical of deep EU integration and wary of the war's spillover. Magyar is reading the room. Orbán is trying to change the subject.

The Mercosur test

Earlier this year Orbán tried another trap: the EU-Mercosur trade agreement with South America. Fidesz opposes the deal on the grounds it would hurt Hungarian farmers. Because Tisza sits with the centre-right European People's Party grouping, which supported the pact, Orbán accused Magyar of backing the agreement and betraying farmers. In January Tisza MEPs voted to freeze ratification, breaking with the EPP line. The move triggered what an official present described as a "shitstorm" against the Hungarian delegation at the subsequent group meeting. Magyar survived the rebellion; the episode showed he is willing to defy his European parliamentary family when domestic politics demands it.

Munich outreach, institutional silence

At the Munich Security Conference this month Magyar began a tentative courtship of European leaders. He met Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of Germany, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković of Croatia, and President Alexander Stubb of Finland. The messaging was calibrated: restore democratic and judicial norms to unlock frozen EU funds, but do so in defence of "Hungarian interests". On Ukraine the language was cooler. After meeting Merz on 14 February Magyar posted that his top priority would be securing the EU funds Hungary is entitled to, through anti-corruption measures, judicial independence, and press and academic freedom. With Tusk he stressed he did not support fast-track EU membership for Kyiv.

Conspicuously absent were meetings with the presidents of the European Commission, Council or Parliament. The optics would have been fraught: Fidesz has plastered Budapest with AI-generated images of Magyar conspiring with Ursula von der Leyen against Hungary. Magyar's team is communicating with Ukrainian officials, a Ukrainian government adviser confirmed, describing him as "a little bit more flexible" than Orbán. But flexibility is not alignment.

An enigma in Brussels and Kyiv

The uncertainty extends deep into the European Parliament. A Renew group MEP put it bluntly: "We feel anything is better than Orbán but, honestly, I'm not sure what they are, content wise, what are the things they concretely want to do, for example in Europe and geopolitically." Inside the EPP the jury is similarly out. "We need to see, if Magyar wins, how he will organise the government and distribute power," an EPP official said. "But once you are in power the question is whether he will have the strength to overcome temptations or fall [to them] as Orbán did."

For Kyiv the calculation is pragmatic. A Magyar victory would not mean an overnight thaw. But diplomats hope he would not deliberately wreck EU efforts as Orbán has done. Swedish European Affairs Minister Jessica Rosencrantz told Politico she still hoped for "a shift in the Hungarian approach toward Ukraine because we need to stand united for European security. Given Hungary's own history I think it's unbelievable that they did not show solidarity."