According to analysts, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has used disinformation to scapegoat Ukraine in his election campaign, with some suggesting he is receiving covert assistance from Russia in combating an unprecedented challenge to his 16-year rule, UNN reports, citing AFP.
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The Hungarian Prime Minister — Moscow's closest ally in the European Union — has used AI-generated images to fuel negative sentiment against Ukraine, which is fighting a Russian invasion.
Analysts claim that Russia is helping him shift the focus of discussion away from pressing issues that have propelled opposition leader Péter Magyar's party to the top of opinion polls ahead of Hungary's April 12 elections.
"The campaign rhetoric is deliberately binary — peace versus war — portraying Ukraine as a threat and the current Hungarian government as striving for stability and rationality," Csilla Fedinec, a historian at the ELTE University Centre for Social Sciences, told AFP.
The publication notes that the two neighboring states are in confrontation after Orbán accused Ukraine of delaying the resumption of operations of the pipeline that supplies Russian oil to landlocked Hungary, with Kyiv claiming that the pipeline was damaged by Russian airstrikes in January.
Hungary, a member of the European Union, is also delaying a €90 billion ($103 billion) EU loan to war-torn Ukraine and a new round of sanctions against Russia for its invasion.
Last month, Hungarian counter-terrorism forces temporarily detained Ukrainian bank employees, confiscating valuables across the country.
Tabloids associated with Orbán's Fidesz party published AI-generated photos that exaggerated the amount of cash and gold.
Posts with these images generated extremely high activity on Facebook, with many accounts having non-Hungarian names, no public information, or profile photos — typical signs of fake profiles used in coordinated bot campaigns.
A few weeks earlier, fake images began circulating online, allegedly showing a Hungarian memorial in Zakarpattia — home to Ukraine's Hungarian ethnic minority — desecrated with anti-Hungarian and anti-Orbán slogans, as well as Ukrainian nationalist symbols and swastikas.
Although the monument had been vandalized before, the image was found to have been created using artificial intelligence.
Nevertheless, their publication prompted some social media users to demand retaliatory measures.
Experts claim that there is also evidence of ongoing Russian attempts to influence Hungarian voters ahead of the elections, including through deepfakes and disinformation presented as genuine news reports.
"A disinformation campaign aimed at influencing the elections in Hungary is constantly being detected, as was the case during the elections in Moldova and Romania," Ferenc Fress, former head of the Hungarian Cyber Defence Service, told AFP.
He stated that messages disseminated by Russian groups are "mostly identical to Hungarian pro-government propaganda, so they mutually reinforce each other," adding that he considers the lack of declassified official reports on this issue "problematic."
However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and other ruling party officials have called claims of Russian interference "fake news."
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For his part, Orbán has tried to portray his main rival as a "puppet" of the EU and Ukraine.
"We have to choose who will form the government — me or (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy," Orbán said at a rally in Budapest in mid-March.
Hours later, a large Ukrainian flag was unfurled at an opposition march, and photos of the incidents quickly spread on social media among government politicians and pro-Fidesz media.
But just a day later, it turned out that the people holding the flag were associated with the youth wing of Orbán's party.
"We said there would be false flag operations, but that's not what we meant," Magyar joked at a campaign event.
The opposition leader was already targeted by similar attacks last year when content creators supporting the Fidesz party published an AI-processed image that made it appear as if he was holding a Ukrainian flag.
Hungarian opposition leader vows to remove Orbán's allies if he wins elections24.03.26, 01:02
Over the past year, billboards have also appeared across the country, often paid for with Hungarian taxpayers' money, portraying Zelenskyy in a negative light, including one depicting Magyar flushing money down a golden toilet next to the Ukrainian leader.
However, while the government's campaign contains false, even "surreal" elements, it is based on widespread public fears about Hungary being drawn into the war in Ukraine, said political scientist Eszter Kovács from the University of Vienna.
She told AFP that statements by European leaders about the reintroduction of conscription, calls for rearmament, or the description of the EU as a party to the conflict have only amplified this anxiety.
"The Fidesz party appeals to people's deep need for existential security," the expert said. "Their message is: when the world is falling apart, believe in what you have, even if there are problems, change is a risk."