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After 16 years in power doing Russia’s bidding in Brussels, Hungarian<\/a> Prime Minister Viktor Orban<\/a>\u2019s Fidesz party is at risk of losing power in Sunday’s parliamentary elections<\/a>, with challenger Peter Magyar significantly ahead in polls.<\/p>\n The Kremlin appears to have pulled out all the stops to boost its man in Budapest. An internal intelligence report for Russia\u2019s SVR intelligence service revealed in March outlined a strategy dubbed \u201cthe Gamechanger<\/a>\u201d, which included staging an assassination attempt against Orban to \u201cfundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign\u201d.<\/p>\n The Hungarian campaign has seen a major escalation in interference, including \u201cdocumented influence operations,\u00a0disinformation campaigns\u00a0and reports of intelligence-linked activities\u201d, says Edit Zgut-Przybylska, a research affiliate at the Democracy Institute of the Central European University in Budapest and a specialist on democratic backsliding.<\/p>\n Moscow has also been accused of dispatching a team of election “specialists<\/a>” \u2013 linked to the GRU, Russian military intelligence \u2013 to Budapest to closely monitor these interference operations.<\/p>\n At this point, “what we are seeing is not interference but the collusion between the Hungarian government and Russia”, says Anton Shekhovtsov, director of the Center for Democratic Integrity in Austria and an expert on the links between Moscow and Europe’s far-right parties.<\/p>\n Shekhovtsov noted that US Vice President JD Vance\u2019s joint appearance with Orban in Budapest earlier this week was another attempt by \u201cforeign interests\u201d to influence the vote<\/a>. Rightwing US President Donald Trump has even promised to boost Hungary\u2019s economy<\/a> if Orban wins re-election.<\/p>\n Read more<\/span>\u2019Ready to govern\u2019 Hungary: Former ally Magyar challenges Orban with Europe gun<\/a><\/p>\n The appointment of Daria Boyarskaya, a former interpreter for Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the observer team overseeing the vote for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has come under fire from Hungarian rights groups as well as European lawmakers. An open letter signed by 56 members of the European Parliament last week called for<\/a> Boyarskaya to be removed from the role, citing her ties to Moscow.<\/p>\n \u201cRussia has a clear interest in keeping Orban in power, because Hungary has consistently acted as a Trojan Horse of the Kremlin who\u00a0worked against EU decisions on Ukraine and sanctions against Russia,\u201d says Zgut-Przybylska.\u00a0<\/p>\n Putin\u00a0would lose his “most loyal and reliable” partner within the European Union, she says\u00a0\u2013 a position only underscored by the leak last week of a conversation in which Orban said he was ready to help Putin in any way he can.<\/p>\n “I am at your service<\/a>,” he told the Russian president.<\/p>\n Russia has also tried to help Orban leverage the war in neighbouring Ukraine to \u201creframe the election as an existential choice<\/a> between\u00a0\u2018Peace and stability\u2019 under Fidesz\u00a0and \u2018Chaos and war’ under Tisza\u201d, Zgut-Przybylska says.<\/p>\n But Moscow’s attempts to sow fear do not appear to have convinced an electorate of disgruntled voters who want the government to do more to help them in their daily lives, including in areas like public education and health care. Opposition challenger Magyar, a former member of Orban’s Fidesz who advocates a more pro-European policy, is leading by some 10 points in the polls.<\/p>\nPutin’s translator and Moscow\u2019s ‘Trojan Horse’<\/h2>\n