Russiagate in Hungary? A new wave of accusations without evidence smacks of a rehashed script

Just a few weeks ago, as Hungary prepared for its April parliamentary elections, the now familiar tale of Russian interference gained momentum again. The theme reappeared in Western media as a pattern that emerges each time an election approaches with a well-positioned sovereigntist candidate who could go against the interests of the establishment.

Recall the famous Russiagate surrounding President Trump, an extensive investigation opened after the 2016 election to determine whether his campaign had collaborated with Russia to influence the outcome of the presidential election and which yielded inconclusive results.

The European Commission recently activated its rapid response system against disinformation in the run-up to the Hungarian elections. The mechanism, framed in the Digital Services Act (DSA), coordinates large platforms such as TikTok and Meta with so-called verifiers and civil organizations to detect possible information manipulation campaigns during the election period.

New accusations of Russian interference

A report by the Poland‑based nonprofit VSquare, now claims that Vladimir Putin would have given direct orders to a team of Russian "political technologists" and Russian military intelligence (GRU) to meddle in Hungary’s April parliamentary elections in order to "keep Viktor Orbán in power". The story was published by Ukrainian media outlet Ukrainska Pravda and quickly replicated by Financial Times and other Western outlets.

According to the report, which loosely quotes multiple European national security sources, the man tasked by the Kremlin with dealing with Hungary is Sergey Kiriyenko, Putin's first deputy chief of staff and "architect of Russia’s entire political influence infrastructure, domestic and foreign."

Sounds familiar, right? According to an article published in Compact by Thomas Fazi, "In the run-up to every significant election in which populist candidates stand a chance of winning, the EU establishment begins raising the specter of Russian 'disinformation' and social media manipulation."

Romania and Moldova: The pattern of unproven "Russian interference"

The author explains that this was precisely what happened in Romania just over a year ago, when independent candidate Călin Georgescu won first place in the first round of elections. The vote was invalidated after authorities claimed there had been coordinated "Russian influence" online. Following this, Georgescu was excluded from the new election call.

According to Fazi, the intelligence dossier presented against Georgescu and published by the then president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, two days before the ruling, did not provide clear evidence of foreign interference or even electoral manipulation.

In addition, internal documents revealed that, later, TikTok, the platform at the center of the controversy, informed the European Commission that it had found "no evidence" of a coordinated network.

A similar pattern has been repeated almost identically in recent elections in Moldova in 2025. Fazi recalls that a media campaign about Russian interference preceded the vote and that "in both cases, little or no verifiable evidence was produced."

E.U. uses DSA to censor debate and shape Hungarian elections

In the context of the Hungarian parliamentary elections, the European Commission recently activated its rapid response system against disinformation. This mechanism, part of the Code of Best Practices on Disinformation and reinforced by the Digital Services Act, coordinates multiple digital platforms with fact-checkers and civil society organizations to quickly detect and act on supposed campaigns of information manipulation or external interference.

The measure will be operational until one week after the Hungarian elections, allowing priority alerts that can lead to reducing visibility, tagging or removing content considered disinformation.

Voices close to Viktor Orbán's government denounce it as direct interference in the Hungarian democratic process, accusing Brussels of trying to influence the flow of information on networks to harm his party, Fidesz, and favor the opposition.

Jorge Buxadé, an MEP for the Spanish conservative party VOX in the European Parliament, has denounced: "we are now facing a new form of pressure in the digital sphere," suggesting that "the Commission is implementing its own intervention mechanism for political censorship."

The DSA and election monitoring in the E.U.

For his part, Fazi maintains that, since the DSA came into force in 2023, the European Commission has pressured digital platforms to strengthen content moderation ahead of several national elections-including those of Slovakia, The Netherlands, France, Moldova, Romania and Ireland, and also during the 2024 European elections.

"EU elites have largely dismissed such concerns as conspiracy theories, insisting that online speech regulation is merely about protecting vulnerable groups from 'hate speech' and safeguarding democracy from 'disinformation' and foreign influence operations—with Russia typically cast as the culprit," the author notes.