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https://freedium-mirror.cfd/https://medium.com/@jens_sorensen_geopol./the-mole-at-the-table-how-orb%C3%A1ns-hungary-gave-putin-a-seat-in-every-eu-council-meeting-91eb04eafa00>
"At the European Union summit held in Brussels in late March 2026, Hungary's
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán once again positioned himself as a victim of
international pressure.
Between rounds of discussions, he stepped before television cameras to bemoan
the pressure he claimed was mounting against him from all sides. It was a
familiar performance — theatrical, combative, and carefully staged for domestic
consumption back in Budapest.
But the spectacle unfolding in the corridors of European power concealed a far
more troubling reality, one that had begun to crystallize in the minds of
European intelligence officials, heads of government, and MEPs across the
political spectrum: that the Orbán government had not merely drifted toward
Moscow but had, by all indications, been actively serving as its eyes and ears
within the most sensitive deliberations of the European Union.
The immediate political backdrop to these events was Hungary's decision to
block a ninety-billion-euro emergency loan to Ukraine, a country already
teetering on the edge of financial collapse under the weight of Russia's
ongoing military invasion.
Orbán justified this obstruction by accusing Kyiv of interrupting the flow of
cheap Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline into Hungary — even though the
initial disruption to that infrastructure had been caused by a Russian strike,
a fact Orbán conspicuously omitted from his narrative. In blocking the loan, he
was defying not only the rest of the European Union but reversing a commitment
his own government had made just months earlier in December 2025.
The maneuver fit a well-established pattern: Hungary using its EU membership
and voting power to dilute, delay, or outright cancel measures designed to
support Ukraine and punish Russia. Budapest had already blocked or watered down
multiple packages of EU sanctions against Moscow, and had even succeeded in
removing figures such as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill,
from the EU's sanctions blacklist.
But it was a bombshell investigative report published by
The Washington Post
— written by Catherine Belton, the journalist and author renowned for her deep
reporting on the Kremlin's inner workings — that pushed matters to a breaking
point.
The report, drawing on information from European intelligence services, alleged
that Hungary's Foreign Minister, Péter Szijjártó, had for years been
systematically leaking sensitive information from EU meetings directly to his
Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The mechanism was as brazen as it was simple: during breaks in EU council
sessions and ministerial gatherings, Szijjártó would step away to place
telephone calls, relaying real-time accounts of what had been discussed —
positions taken, arguments made, potential compromise solutions floated —
directly to Moscow.
According to one senior security official cited in the reporting, this practice
meant that, effectively, Moscow had been sitting at the table in every EU
meeting for years."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
