Orban allies lash out over report alleging staged assassination attempt
Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary (photo: Getty Images)
The Hungarian government hastily denied media reports about Russian intelligence services preparing a staged assassination attempt against pro‑Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, according to the Hungarian editionTelex.
Budapest rushed to refute the data published by the American newspaper The Washington Post. And to lend some credibility to its statements, Orbán's government claimed it was supposedly propaganda and made several new jabs at Ukraine.
"The information in the Washington Post is completely false, pro‑Ukrainian propaganda. On the other hand, it is a fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly threatened to kill the Hungarian prime minister during the election campaign," the Hungarian government said.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, a loyal supporter of Orbán, also criticized the article, accusing Ukraine and the Hungarian opposition of whipping up hysteria around attacks. According to him, the opposition party Tisza and its sponsors are allegedly inventing crazy conspiracy theories.
Szijjártó believes that the information about a Russian connection to the assassination plot is supposedly an attempt to destabilize the situation in the country ahead of the elections.
On March 21, the American newspaper The Washington Post reported that Russian foreign intelligence had developed a plan to stage an assassination attempt on Orbán. The attack was intended to change the course of the election campaign, which Orbán is losing.
The Kremlin reacted hysterically – the spokesman for the Russian dictator, Dmitry Peskov, called the report disinformation. But given the information that the Kremlin is assisting Orbán in his election campaign, the denial appears unconvincing.
Incidentally, Péter Magyar, the leader of the Hungarian opposition party Tisza, publicly accused Prime Minister Orbán of inviting agents of Russian military intelligence (GRU) to Hungary to interfere in the parliamentary elections scheduled for April 12. Magyar is demanding that Orbán immediately expel the Russians from Hungary.
