Ukraine’s arrest of suspected Hungarian intelligence operatives in Transcarpathia has revived fears about Budapest’s intentions towards the region. But experts think the incident says more about Orban’s electoral vulnerability than his territorial ambitions.
Ukraine’s relationship with the US has improved over the last month with President Donald Trump expressing growing impatience with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s tactical dissimulation over ending the war. Conversely, the already poor dynamic between Ukraine and one of its immediate neighbours, Hungary, appears to have worsened significantly.
On May 9, the Ukrainian authorities disclosed that they had detained two Ukrainian citizens in the western region of Zarkapatia (Transcarpathia) who, they alleged, were working for Hungarian intelligence.
The Transcarpathian region boasts an ethnic-Hungarian community estimated at about 100,000 prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Kyiv has long accused Hungary of undue interference in the province, while Hungary has cited concerns about the welfare of the Hungarian minority as a pretext for blocking closer relations between Ukraine and both the EU and NATO.
Ukraine’s counter-intelligence service, the SBU, claims that the two operatives were tasked with gathering information “about military security in Transcarpathia, to identify weak points in the region’s ground and air defences, and to study the socio-political views of local residents, particularly with regard to their expected behaviour in the event of Hungarian troops entering the region.”
Additionally, one of the two individuals is alleged to have been investigating what kinds of military equipment could be purchased on the black market in Transcarpathia.
Budapest responded rapidly with a strongly worded statement from Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, accusing Ukraine of “anti-Hungarian propaganda”, and the expulsion of two Ukrainian embassy staff in Budapest that it accused of spying under diplomatic cover. Kyiv immediately reciprocated by expelling two Hungarian diplomats. Ukraine had also been due to send a high-level representative to the Budapest Energy and Security Talks (BEST) – a NATO-sponsored security conference in the Hungarian capital that took place on May 19-20 – but then withdrew from participation.
Ukrainian revelations about Hungary’s alleged espionage in Transcarpathia were followed on May 10 by the publication of photographs purporting to show a Hungarian military build-up near the Ukrainian border 48 hours before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour on February 24, 2022. The deployment, according to the American-based Robert Lansing Institute security think tank which published the photos, appeared to involve heavy armour and artillery as well as troops.
Since 2022, the Hungarian government has claimed consistently that its troop build-up was geared to providing logistical, medical and public order support to local civil authorities in the event of a refugee influx. The Robert Lansing Institute, however, asserted that, “the decision to mobilise heavily mechanized units… seems disproportionate and strategically incongruent with the stated objective.”
In the think tank’s view, “since at least 2014, the Hungarian government has maintained… contingency plans for an incursion into Western Ukraine —plans that may be informally coordinated with Moscow.”
International experts sceptical
Security analysts are generally cautious both about the significance of the spying scandal and the plausibility of Hungarian military intervention in Ukraine.
“Data on Ukrainian ground and air defences in Transcarpathia would be of little use to the Hungarian army,” argued a May 17 opinion piece by Anton Shekhovtsov of Vienna’s Centre for Democratic Integrity. Shekhovtsov believes that given Hungary’s own general lack of military preparedness relative to Ukraine, “the only actor likely to benefit from such intelligence is Russia.”
Kurt Volker, the US special envoy to Ukraine under the first Trump administration, took a more critical line when engaging with journalists this week at BEST. Hungary’s general posture towards Ukraine is, Volker noted, “very concerning, it’s Hungary seeming to take sides with Russia against Ukraine.”
Regarding the spying allegations, however, he was more cautious. “Nations engage in espionage, I don’t think this is a shock,” Volker said, pointing out that even allies spy on one another.
Fomenting civil strife on the other hand would, he acknowledged, be more worrying, but he believes there is insufficient information to draw any conclusions. “I think we probably need to learn a little more about what this operation was and what [those] people were doing – and we probably never will,” he said.
Experts also doubt that bilateral frictions would allow Hungary to obstruct the creation of any new European security architecture which includes Ukraine. “We’ve noted these problems, but don’t see them as major road blocks,” Peer Teschendorf, desk officer for European Foreign and Security Policy at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin, told BIRN.
Domestic dimension
Adding to the intrigue is that Ukraine’s announcement of the two arrests in Transcarpathia occurred 24 hours after the release of a secret recording of Hungarian Defence Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky made in April 2023. In the recording, released by Peter Magyar, the rising star of Hungary’s opposition Tisza party, the defence minister can be heard urging his colleagues to “break with the peace mentality and move into phase zero of the road to war.”
The coincidence has prompted some critics of the ruling Fidesz party to speculate that Szalay-Bobrovniczky’s words might refer to Hungarian ambitions in Transcarpathia.
Szalay-Bobrovniczky, and other government representatives, acknowledged the veracity of the recording while maintaining that the minister’s remarks have been misconstrued. Communication from Fidesz has asserted that Ukraine’s disclosure of the arrests constitutes an effort both to support Magyar’s electoral ambitions and to sway an ongoing postal vote in Hungary on Ukraine’s possible EU membership. This “consultative referendum”, called Voks2025 (Vote2025), lacks a clear legal basis and has been dismissed by commentators as an effort by Fidesz to regain control of the communication space from Magyar.
In a Facebook post on May 13 following a special meeting of the government’s Defence Council, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed that, “a concerted disinformation campaign against Hungary has been launched by Ukraine in order to derail our ballot initiative on its EU membership.”
The prime minister further claimed that during the meeting it emerged “the Ukrainians have resumed cooperation with their contacts within Hungary… With the help of a Hungarian party, [the Ukrainians] have launched an attack on the Hungarian Defence Forces.”
Ironically, some of Fidesz’s critics also connect the espionage allegations with domestic electoral processes, but in a radically different way. A retired senior Hungarian diplomat who did not wish to be named told BIRN: “I can’t help wondering if this incident actually tells us rather more about Fidesz’s plans for Hungary than its plans for Ukraine.”
Like Shekhovtsov, the diplomat believes that despite some recent long-overdue retooling, Hungary’s armed forces remain inadequately prepared for a real hostile encounter with Ukraine’s military. Nonetheless, he said, “I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that Orban might provoke – or just simulate – a small ‘border incident’ early next year.”
Noting the opposition Tisza party’s current 14-point poll lead over Fidesz, he continued: “Such an incident would provide an excellent excuse for Orban to cancel the [next spring’s general] election, which he otherwise seems destined to lose.”