Good morning.
If someone shot the Hungarian prime minister before the election in April it might be a "Gamechanger", but another pro-Russia and MAGA populist failed to take power in a hung Slovenian vote.
A "Gamechanger" is what Russia's 'SVR' foreign-intelligence service called staging a potential false-flag attack in Hungary in an internal report leaked to the Washington Post newspaper on Saturday (21 March).
"The staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orbán ... [would] fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election," the SVR said.
“Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one [in his favour]," it added.
A European intelligence officer also told the US newspaper that Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó took regular phone breaks at EU foreign ministers' meetings in Brussels to give Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov "live reports on what’s been discussed".
Szijjártó and the Kremlin called the Washington Post story "lies", "fake news" and "disinformation".
But Polish prime minister Donald Tusk and foreign minister Radek Sikorski endorsed it on X, with Tusk saying: "That’s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary [in EU meetings] and say just as much as necessary".
For his part, Orbán huddled with other pro-Russian populists at a 'CPAC' conference in Budapest on Sunday, which included Argentinian president Javier Milei, Georgian prime minister Irakhli Kobakidze, Austrian politician Herbert Kickl, German politician Alice Weidel, and Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
Orbán will be joined in Budapest on Monday by Polish far-right president Karol Nawrocki, as well as French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish far-right party leaders from his EU Parliament 'Patriots for Europe' group, but Russia's top EU asset might still fail, the leaked SVR report fretted.
“The majority (52.3 percent) are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country [Hungary] ... The dissatisfaction prevails not only in cities, but also in the rural areas (50.8 percent), where traditionally the ruling Fidesz party’s position is strong," the SVR report said, according to the Washington Post.
The Orbán family of friendly-Russia and MAGA populist EU leaders includes Slovak prime minister Robert Fico and Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš.
But their sibling, Slovenia's Janez Janša, failed to get back into power in elections on Sunday, where exit polls predicted a hung parliament after a low turnout of 21 percent.
Janša's SDS party came second with 27 seats out of 90, losing to the liberal GS party of incumbent prime minister Robert Golob with 30 seats, polls said.
But Golob will struggle to form a ruling coalition, meaning he might stay on in a caretaker role only until a new election is held in the next two months.
As in Hungary, the Slovenian vote was marred by spy tricks, amid revelations by the Mladina news website that Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube had organised a smear campaign against Janša's rivals using covert recordings.
Meanwhile, if Szijjártó did phone Lavrov it would not be the first time a foreign power got live EU Council briefings.
Back on 15 January 2016, for instance, EU ambassadors on the Council's 'Political and Security Committee [PSC]' suspected their Greek colleague was feeding updates to Israel.
After the PSC leaks, a senior EU official told EUobserver at the time "there was a follow-up discussion at Coreper [another Council organ] where an element of [foreign] espionage was raised, but this was just to save face and to prevent someone from having to turn to the suspects [Greece] and say: ‘You fuckers did it’."
Unless the Washington Post has its own mole in the SVR, it means a Western spy service gave them the leaked Russian "Gamechanger" report.
Orbán is vetoing existential EU aid to Kyiv to try to get re-elected, on top of his years-long litany of pro-Russian, anti-EU, and illiberal acts.
And as the election date approaches in Hungary, it seems his EU colleagues are becoming readier to point the finger and say "you did it", in contrast to the more polite Greek incident 10 years ago.
Andrew Rettman, foreign-affairs editor
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