Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) proposed staging an assassination attempt on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in order to increase his electoral rating ahead of the April elections. The Washington Post reported this, citing documents.
According to internal SVR documents obtained and confirmed by the intelligence service of a European country, whose identity is not specified, an attack on Orban could shift public perception of the election from a rational sphere to an emotional one, where the main issues would become “state security and stability” rather than the country’s socioeconomic situation.
The SVR report says that the party of Viktor Orban’s main rival, Peter Magyar, is currently considered the favorite in the race, while more than half of Hungary’s residents are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country.
It is unknown at what level this initiative was discussed. The Kremlin called the information “another example of disinformation.”
As WP notes, Moscow is highly interested in Orban’s victory in the parliamentary elections in April because Budapest has repeatedly obstructed key EU political initiatives and served for the Kremlin as “a link to American conservatives in hopes of creating a new post-liberal world order”:
“The very idea of an assassination attempt on Orban shows how high the stakes are for Moscow in Hungary’s election campaign,” the journalists write.