Yves here. I hope I am not stepping on Conor’s toes with a brief post on the landslide win by Viktor Orban’s opponents and what that might portend. First a mainstream view courtesy Politico’s European newsletter:
ORBÁN OUT AS RIVAL CLINCHES ELECTION WIN: Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar has dealt Prime Minister Viktor Orbán a crushing electoral defeat, ending his 16-year grip on power and opening a new chapter in Budapest’s relations with the EU and the world…..
Relief in Brussels: Officials and diplomats in Brussels voiced relief, after years of the EU locking horns with Orbán over his illiberal agenda and alignment with Russia. “A muddy election result could have been a nightmare,” an EU diplomat told Playbook. “I think we’re all relieved.
Hungary “returns to its European path,” tweeted European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in one of several Hungarian-language postings issued minutes after Orbán conceded. Other EU and European leaders also celebrated the result.
Why it matters: Orbán’s defeat is a blow to both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, who had thrown their weight behind Europe’s self-described illiberal leader. The decision to send Vice President JD Vance to Budapest during the last stretch of campaigning was emblematic of Trump’s investment in the outcome.
Transatlantic tally: POLITICO’s Alex Burns has a smart take on how this result will resonate in Washington and what Democrats should learn from it. Reuters is reporting on how Democrats in the U.S. are cheering the defeat of Trump’s closest European ally.
Lessons: Vance’s intervention didn’t end up swaying the vote, amid widespread frustration in the electorate about corruption, high inflation and low growth in one of the EU’s worst-performing economies.
A decisive victory: Another key takeaway is that Magyar appears to have clinched a super-majority of votes that will allow him to enact far-reaching reforms.
What it means: The center-right opposition leader has vowed to deliver judicial reforms that would lead Brussels to release billions of euros in EU funds frozen over rule-of-law concerns. It also empowers him to remove Orbán loyalists from key positions….
Time to go: “I call upon all the puppets to do the same, to leave their office, those who served the Orbán regime in the last 16 years,” naming the president of the Supreme Court, the general prosecutor and other top figures in the government.
Ukraine angle: Orbán’s defeat also raises the prospect that Budapest could lift its veto from major EU policy planks toward Ukraine, including a €90 billion loan for Kyiv that Hungary had blocked.
Not so fast: But hopes among Kyiv’s allies for an instant turnaround in Budapest’s attitude toward Ukraine may be overblown, as Max reported. The incoming prime minister is a nationalist who has rejected sending weapons to Kyiv and signaled he would put any EU membership bid by Ukraine to a referendum.
Consider also:
Netanyahu sent his son to campaign for Orbán. Netanyahu sent a personal video to Orbán’s rally. Orbán just lost by 14 points, the biggest landslide in Hungarian democratic history.
Why did Netanyahu care so much?
Because Orbán was the only EU leader who vetoed sanctions on… pic.twitter.com/bGLr1lBJLZ
— S͎a͎l͎a͎d͎i͎n͎🇸🇴⚖️🕋✍️ (@InaHassan3) April 12, 2026
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
The EU- and Ukrainian- backed Hungarian opposition just won a two-thirds supermajority in the latest parliamentary elections that ended Viktor Orban’s 16 years in office. His crushing defeat followed the EU earlier freezing €17 billionin allocated funds on rule of law pretexts, Russiagate conspiracy theories derived from wiretaps of Orban and his Foreign Minister, and Ukrainian energy blackmail as well as threats. Liberal-globalists like Ursula von der Leyen, Alex Soros, and Donald Tusk predictably celebrated.
While the aforementioned factors played a role in turning public opinion against Orban, several other ones were arguably more important. For instance, he’s an older politician who naturally doesn’t appeal as much to the youth as his relatively younger rival, Peter Magyar. He’s also been in office for 16 years, so the opposition played on anti-incumbent sentiment, to which end they blamed him for the stagnant economy despite him doing his best given the circumstances. Corruption accusations also abounded.
The socio-political system that Orban built will now be dismantled since the opposition’s two-thirds supermajority enables them to change the constitution. Witch hunts against conservative-nationalists, beginning with him and his Foreign Minister on Russiagate-related grounds, also can’t be ruled out. His policies in support of traditional values might soon become a thing of the past. Although Magyar claims to be an immigration hardliner, he might reverse course to please the EU, thus flooding Hungary.
On the economic front, decoupling from Russian energy could lead to price spikes, though he might move gradually to avoid squandering the goodwill that he has among the electorate. The same goes for his plans to replace the forint, Hungary’s national currency, with the euro. Therefore, while meaningful change is afoot, it might not happen right away. Nevertheless, the end result will be the weakening of Hungarian sovereignty and possibly its outright loss, thus reversing Orban’s hard-earned achievements.
Likewise, Hungary isn’t expected to retain its reputation as Europe’s conservative-nationalist bastion, with this instead shifting to Poland, which was in a friendly competition with Hungary for this title till its own (admittedly very imperfect) conservative-nationalists were “democratically deposed” in fall 2023. Last year, however, Poland narrowly elected a conservative-nationalist president and the former ruling party with which he’s allied might return to power after fall 2027’s next parliamentary elections.
Polish conservatism differs from its more well-known Hungarian and German variants in being explicitly anti-Russian. It also envisages Europe in junior partnership with the US instead of truly sovereign and opposing the US when their interests diverge. From the Polish perspective, this is a necessary cost for ensuring continued US support against Russia and “pragmatically” recognizes the limitations to European leadership, but it’s of course controversial and unpopular outside of Poland and the Baltic States.
All in all, the EU, Ukraine, and liberal-globalists across the West will be emboldened by the dramatic way in which the “Battle for Hungary” ended, which will facilitate the EU’s transition to de facto war footing. Orban stood in the way of this but now he’s been “democratically deposed”. Others such as like-minded Czechia and Slovakia might try to replace Hungary’s role, but they’re considered more vulnerable to EU pressure, including Color Revolutions. The EU’s march to war with Russia might therefore be inevitable.
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If he really goes through with “Euro” plan Hungarians can as well hang themselves.
The results are still coming in: Much depends on Magyar’s ministers.
There should be a good deal of skepticism of Magyar, who is a former member of Fidesz, Orbán’s own party.
I read two articles in Fatto Quotidiano today, both of which are somewhat skeptical of Magyar, who, by Italian standards, is still fodder for the Italian governing coalition. He’s not Partito Democratico.
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2026/04/12/peter-magyar-premier-ungheria-orban-news/8353348/
Noting his birth among the Hungarian elite, and his education at the Catholic University of Budapest — and we’re talking Central European Catholics and all of their hangups.
An article published in the paper edition of FQ written by Cosmo Caridi doesn’t seem to be at the FQ web site. Caridi was even more skeptical, and he pointed to some scandals surrounding Magyar.
In short, Magyar is perfect for Ursula von der Leyen because he aligns with her politics.
A larger question: What is it in Hungarian culture that has so many problems with the democratic mindset? Is it years of bad land distribution and too much hierarchy?
PS: Not to pick on Korybko, but I do take exception to his choice of words “flooding Hungary.” There is more in heaven and earth than the fears of Central Europeans.
I’m not aware of anything about Hungary that is less lowercase-d democratic than any other EU country
It’s complicated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Hungarian_parliamentary_election
Tisza as a party is brand new, untested. The two parties in parliament are both right of center. Hmm.
Lots of Hungarian might have voted their wish to be closer to the EU. I am sure that Ursula will grant their wish and give them more EU, good and hard! Don’t know when the next Hungarian election is but I am willing to bet that it will resemble the last Romanian election.
It is certainly welcome news that the evil Zionist has been ousted from power. However, it is ironic that a man whom Western nations regarded as a dictator accepted the election results and stepped down gracefully.
re: The last link to Korybko´s Substack on NATO v. RU
He seems to buy the NATO PR, too:
“(…)Prior to Russia’s development of hypersonic missiles, US missile defense infrastructure in Poland undermined Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities, but the aforesaid arms have since restored strategic parity by neutralizing this threat.
The latest Polish-emanating threat to Russia concerns its unprecedented military build-up, which has led to it commanding the EU’s largest army at over 215,000 troops, with plans to reach 300,000 by 2030 and half a million by 2039 (200,000 of which would be reservists). “Germany Is Competing With Poland To Lead Russia’s Containment”, while the EU promulgated the €800 billion “ReArm Europe Plan” last year, and all these reserves will swiftly reach the Russian/Belarusian border due to the “military Schengen”.
(…)
Russia might face along its western frontier could mirror the one in June 1941(…)”.
1) The real issue was not really “undermined Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities” – but the delusion of US planners that this were the case and thus foolishly start Armageddon assuming they could win.
2) “restored strategic parity by neutralizing this threat” – the issue is not parity but supremacy, ffs.
3) “The latest Polish-emanating threat to Russia concerns its unprecedented military build-up” – why should Europe fare better against Russia, if the US failed so miserably against Iran? Numbers on papers mean nothing.
4) 1941 again – seriously? Has he forgotten the military and industrial realities in Russia compared to Germany at the eve of Barbarossa? Or why the hell did Stalin sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?! I would really like people to stop making improper comparisons to WWII, events that are now 80+years old.
To repeat: US officers have warned multiple times that in a war with RU, US would loose as many troops in 14 days as it lost in 20 years of War on Terror, about 50k.
This obvious military reality was also acknowledged by a German officer a few months ago when trying to be the strongman picturing 10k KIA in a week.
While mainly the figure is the problem (way too small) antiwar sentiment of course criticized him harshly for speaking the truth (regardless of the incompetent and nutty agenda.)
Besides compared to US troops EU troops are not even worth mention. And Russian means and control have again reached a new level since those studies were conceived.
So this whole NATO goes to war with RU business is utter nonsense, imho.
The Baltic Commanders always walked back when any such claims became very expressive in MSM.
Belarussian “Ambassador” to Berlin in an interview with Patrik Baab 10 days ago described that Belarus and Poland worked closely when those fake Russian drones entered Polish airspace and crashed, in order to deter any crisis.
German-language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI1FE2FkQ7c
Also last week a scandal broke that RHEINMETALL received 10 times as much funding and time for developing a drone which so far has not left the “Powerpoint-presentation” phase. You can imagine what backstabbing is going on behind the scenes in the German /EU arms industry competition.
If Iran War reaches new levels of economic damage, the arms industry will have even bigger problems with resources.
More and more bad talk about F-35.
One failure after another of non-US arms projects.
Scandal about “misuse” ( I welcomed it of course) of the German 800B rearmament loan to balance budgets in broke states instead of building arms and repair infrastructure for troop deployment.
And so on. It´s a clusterfuck. Not least due to the secret fact that files and ranks in Germany and the other countries do not want war. Nobody wants that if they are being honest. So we are witnessing this moronic side-stepping and bluster.
Stanislav Krapitnik, based on Ukraine, estimates casualties at 10,000 per day. The EU health system would be overwhelmed and most would die. Ukraine has been losing 1000/day in an SMO and they are tough in a way Poland is not. I do not think Russia would hold back, and the West has no defense against Russian wonderwaffen that actually are.
is colour revolution theory still widely believed ? and what is the general sentiment on it from readers here
What is ‘colour revolution theory’ in your opinion?
that the powers that be can intentionally cause revolutions in other countries
Theory?
The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins lays out how the “hard core” version of color revolution works historically. I guess if you are old school, Kaiser Wilhelm backed Lenin in Russia. The Ukraine “color revolution” might be the “less bloody” version of regime change, but it put Ukraine on a direct path to bloody civil war then proxy war with Russia.
Why would the US spend so much on programs like USAID and NED if there was no cash value back? We obviously don’t give a rat’s @$$ about our own people, why would we care about anyone else’s unless we had a plan to use them to help Western capital rip off resources and pay low wages (freedom ain’t free, but its below minimum wage if you know what I mean)?
Might mention that Hungary, like most of Europe, is presently in recession. Never fun to be the incumbent in that situation.
On immigration, Magyar actually outflanked Orban to the right. Hungary maintains a relatively small guestworker program, bringing in 35,000 non EU workers annually. Magyar wants to axe that, because among other things he says they’re eating the goldfish and ducks at the Budapest Zoo.
His silence was deafening on the question of whether he would repeal the laws against LGBTQ “propaganda”, which I’m guessing means they’re reasonably popular with his constituency.
His shtick is that he will overcome the obsolete left-right divide (what left?) with a program grounded on the 3 pillars of Christianity, Patriotism, and Markets.
Seeing on X that Magyar intends to continue buying oil from Russia or wherever is cheapest and reliable, advocates EU dropping Russian sanctions after Ukraine war, and is opposed to fast tracking EU membership for Ukraine. Re Russia he was quoting as saying “geography is geography.”
Sounds like a younger, less socially conservative pragmatist.
The thing is, what will Ursula say about that? He can do whatever judicial reforms he dreams up, but these were just pretexts and unless he caves in on the real sticking points, I foresee further bureaucratic problems in releasing these blocked EU funds.
re: German delusions
If anyone expects this country to find its path back into normalcy vis a vis RU et al. read this interview by left daily TAZ with Green MEP Anton Hofreiter. The guy is simply insane and incredibly dumb. The awful truth: Untill he turned into this crazy globalist he used to be a decent biologist and agrocultural expert from Bavaria who knew a lot about bees but nothing about bombs.
Well, here we are now…
And don´t kid yourselves, just because the GREENs lost out on the election last year – this guy is representative for many Germans and he will remain so as “climate” will not go away. And when it returns with a vengeance I don´t wanna know how these people will wack out…
use google-translate
“Trump, Putin and the AfD together lost an election.”
Anton Hofreiter is the Green Party’s chairman of the European Affairs Committee. Following Orbán’s election defeat, he is calling for this opportunity to be seized for EU reforms.
https://taz.de/Anton-Hofreiter-zur-Ungarn-Wahl-Trump-Putin-und-die-AfD-haben-zusammen-eine-Wahl-verloren/!6170561/
Replace the empty term “globalist” with “warmonger” and we have it. He must know that wars and military are among the most environmentally destructive activities humans can do. Is he getting paid, or threatened?
Unless Nuclear Winter is the answer to Climate Change? It looks like they are typical hypocrite politicians
As others smarter than me have said: Orban was the last and only sane EU leader, someone against the Ukr war and against RU sanctions cutting off vital energy flows to the EU.
What will happen to the EU now that the one politician acting as the ‘machine governor’ has been ousted?
Will the EU fly apart from the economic strain? More war, more inflation, more poverty, less manufacturing, shrinking economies, etc. / imo.
Martin Armstrong thinks the EU will disaggregate into it’s constituent countries by 2035. (The online spellchecker thinks “disaggregate” isn’t a real word. ha. Love that AI. )
Ee up ‘n’ golly by gosh. My guess is it will happen before 2035 as cheap energy flows to Europe are subjected to reciprocal sanctions by Russia, and supported by Iran and Yemen, giving Europe the chance to go broke by paying top dollar for spatters from the declining US oil and gas industries, and either satisfying the Greens by developing highly competitive new model watermills whilst giving them reason to justify theit existence by re-developing the coal industry to drive industrial production and see how well that feeds them. War tribunals will be the most important new growth industry, and Russia and Germany, mindful of their war dead, will form a natural strategic alliance which will enable them to stabilise European politics and its various national economies. Just speculating, mind you.
Magyar is an ex-Fidesz (Orbán’s party) and he was in corruption scandals. Nobody is sure what he is going to do. What is really curious is Orbán was a Sorosite, he stopped to be it, and he worked actively for Israel, the US (Trump side) and not that much for Russia. And nothing at all for Brussels (any side) (except accepting money). The EU is somewhat a puzzle where to be a NATO country means nearly nothing, in fact the most rabious pro-NATO are two ex-neutrals (Finland and Sweden). Sánchez traveled to China four times in the last four years, the last one he was received as a mega-leader (make a comparison with the Germans). When he criticized Israel during Gaza hard genocide, he still sent military stuff to Israel not very much under the table but at open sight, now, he effectively banished any US action from/to/over Spain about Iran War. And the guy from Belgium about the Russian money, Meloni, the Irish circus, the clowns of Portugal and the strange ones, to say the least, from the Balkans.
All this people make a strange picture, don’t they? (EU leaders, I mean). They are not at all any menace to anyone but themselves.
If Netanyahu’s son came to my country to campaign for a candidate, I’d vote for the devil himself just to make sure that candidate didn’t get elected.
Orbán should have been more careful about which causes he chose to support.
YES
I wish. Permanent and deep stain (understatement) that Orban, who could sound so clear-sighted on the Ukraine war, threw himself into supporting Israel and therefore genocide.
YES
Hungary after 16 years of Orbán: Is there still no escape from the currency appreciation trap?
https://www.relevante-oekonomik.com/2026/04/13/ungarn-nach-16-jahren-orban-wieder-kein-entkommen-aus-der-aufwertungsfalle/
As a German who lived through Kohl and Merkel i can only see this as positive. 16 years are more than enough.
If a politician cannot finish their agenda _and_ cannot find a successor with almost the same goals in that time (or even only 8 or 12 years), they failed. Period.
Agreed, it seems the nature of politics: you get elected with +/- 55%, six month later you’ll be probably at 45% and then it become a defense (Merkel biting Merz 23 year ago) from defending you position only loyalty counts which has a taste of authoritarianism and then getting used to decide at will. The system to oust a person in power after two terms seems to be more reasonable then staying on till embarrassment sets in.
There’s a nice summary by a former Slovak politician Juraj Draxler. Here is the translation:
Orbán was a successful autocrat; now he has suffered a significant defeat. How will this actually change Hungarian politics?
Honestly, on key issues, far less than some headlines might suggest.
Tisza party leader and future Prime Minister Péter Magyar is certainly more declaratively “pro-EU” than Orbán, but on some issues he will not go against the current trend.
He is and will remain opposed to accelerating Ukraine’s EU accession process. While he won’t block certain steps regarding Ukraine as vocally as Orbán, he won’t be an unproblematic supporter either. Essentially, he’ll do what Robert Fico does.
He’ll also tone things down a bit, but he won’t radically change his stance toward the tiny country. Orbán was one of Bibi’s main allies in the Central and Eastern European region. But Magyar won’t go against this clique. Again, he’ll join those politicians in Romania and, ahem, in one other country, who operate more with quiet support.
Simply put, if we set aside the activist articles, we can openly say that the new leader’s main task was and is to repair relations with the EU so that the 18 billion euros frozen by Brussels due to Hungarian missteps—which many in Hungary would like to see paid out—can be unfrozen.
Simply put, Magyar is a sort of “Orbán light”—it couldn’t be any other way. And there’s a good chance that Tisza will gradually absorb some of Fidesz’s structures, if not the whole party. That is, if the relatively inexperienced Magyar manages to hold the reins firmly as he ascends to power.
But he has the solid backing of a few powerful people, so he will likely succeed.
I did not memorize the name of the winning party, but it managed to collect somewhat disparate followers of Fidesz and “liberal parties” to promise change sufficiently palatable to the former (Fidesz without corruption and with more nimble negotiations with EU) while exciting the latter with “change at last” — however small.
It remains to be seen who will be disillusioned in the aftermath.
“Polish conservatism differs from its more well-known Hungarian and German variants in being explicitly anti-Russian.” More complicated than that. Explicitly anti-Russian PiS seems to lost some popularity to more Russian-ambigous and anti-Ukrainian parties, and current projections of next election results would lead to such a coalition forming the government.