According to The Washington Post, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service intends to stage an assassination attempt on Hungarian leader Viktor Orban. The SVR believes that this will help increase the chances of Putin's ally winning in parliamentary elections.
Points of attention
- Despite the lack of physical attacks on Orban, the escalation of tensions indicates the high stakes involved and the level of fear within the Russian camp.
- Understanding the intricacies of this geopolitical maneuver sheds light on the lengths some are willing to go to maintain influence and power on the international stage.
Russia fears Orban's defeat in the elections
As journalists managed to find out, in February 2026, a wave of panic swept through the Russian SVR unit amid a sharp decline in public support for the head of the Hungarian government, Viktor Orban.
The probability that Putin's ally will lose the parliamentary elections is really high.
That is why Russian intelligence officers proposed implementing a strategy that could "fundamentally change the entire paradigm of the election campaign" — to carry out a fake assassination attempt on Orban.
Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign from the rational sphere of socio-economic issues to an emotional one, where the key topics will be state security and stability and the protection of the political system, says a report for the main unit of political influence operations of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.
Despite the fact that there are only a few weeks left before the start of the elections in Hungary, there have been no physical attacks on Orbán so far.
However, the SWR's efforts to influence Hungarian public opinion indicate that Putin is indeed very afraid of his ally's defeat.
