In this episode of the Liberal Europe Podcast, Leszek Jażdżewski talks with Dr Péter Krekó about the forthcoming election to the National Assembly in Hungary, the possible outcomes in the current geopolitical situation, and their implications for the region.
It is likely that most voters in Hungary will see Orbán’s argumentation as a distraction from his close political ties to Putin and a distraction from the close interconnection of Orbán’s oligarchic environment to Putin’s oligarchic environment.
The unprovoked invasion of Russia is an unprecedented act of war. Vladimir Putin is denying Ukrainians the right to exist. He denies the foundations on which the coexistence of nations established after the Second World War is based.
Russia attacked Ukraine. The first missiles and rounds fell in the south, including the capital – Kiev. The Russian army crossed the borders of Ukraine in a number of points, including across the border with Belarus.
The Czech response to expel 18 Russian diplomats was just the beginning of the biggest conflict between Moscow and Prague in the modern history of both countries, which escalated into an unprecedented expelling of up to 70 Russian embassy staff from the Czech Republic.
With electing the PiS government for the second time in a row, the hope for ending the crisis in the country ended. Any further delay of the ongoing processes from their further development in a hope that Poland shall return to the center of the political debate on the future of Europe seems futile.
PM Orbán has already met the Russian head of state seven times since the Ukrainian crisis began. The more Orbán foments the conflict with the EU, the greater the chance for Russia under Vladimir Putin to influence the diplomatic balance within the EU in his favor.
Ukraine’s dependence on the market for exports to Russia has been declining drastically since 2011. Until then Ukraine’s exports to Russia, the EU, and the rest of the world had been following similar paths.
We may recently often hear that something is a “Putinesque measure”. However, in Hungary, the governing party Fidesz, lead by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is really using Putin’s solutions as its point of reference. Let’s see how similar Orbán’s and Putin’s methods are.
The Liberal movement in Russia is undergoing a serious crisis. There are three reasons for this. First, the Kremlin domestic policies under Putin’s 3rd term in power are designed in such a way that liberals are labelled foreign agents, called enemies of the state, and are being under constant pressure.
