A new government in Hungary formed after the election defeat of the country’s Russia-friendly former prime minister, Viktor Orban, ordered the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats on Tuesday, signaling a sharp turn away from previously cozy relations with Moscow.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Anita Orban, said without elaborating that the diplomats had been told to leave because they had “engaged in activities in Hungary that are unacceptable for diplomats under the Vienna Convention.”
The 1961 convention requires diplomats not to “interfere in the internal affairs” of their host country, something Hungary’s opposition and news media repeatedly accused Russian diplomats of doing, while Mr. Orban turned a blind eye, during his 16-year tenure as prime minister beginning in 2010.
When Szabolcs Panyi, a prominent investigative journalist, wrote articles describing dirty-trick operations in Hungary by Russian intelligence agencies operating out of the Budapest embassy, Mr. Orban’s government responded by opening an espionage case against the journalist and took no action to curtail Russian diplomats.
The case against Mr. Panyi, who in March published the transcript of a phone conversation between the Hungarian and Russian foreign ministers in which the Hungarian sounds obsequiously fawning, was later dropped.
On Tuesday, shortly after Hungary announced the diplomats’ expulsion, Romania, a member of NATO and the European Union like Hungary, said that it had foiled a planned sabotage operation on its territory and detained a Russian citizen connected to it. NATO’s eastern flank has been frazzled in recent months by a wave of mysterious fires and other apparent sabotage actions officials have blamed on Russia.
Allegations of Russian interference in Hungary’s affairs peaked before the election in April. Hungarian news outlets reported that Moscow’s embassy in Budapest had become a nest of spies and that it was involved in pumping out disinformation and other activities aimed at aiding Mr. Orban’s governing Fidesz party.
Fidesz, whose campaign featured denunciations of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and assurances that Russian energy supplies would keep prices low, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Tisza, an upstart party led by Peter Magyar, who replaced Mr. Orban as prime minister in May.
On election night, thousands of young people poured into Budapest’s streets to celebrate, shouting “Russians go home,” a chant used during a 1956 anti-Communist uprising crushed by Soviet troops.
Ms. Orban, the new foreign minister, said that the expulsion decision “protects Hungary’s security and sovereignty” but gave no details. She added that “it does not imply breaking off diplomatic relations with Russia” and that Hungary intended to “continue the necessary dialogue, based on mutual respect and adherence to the rules.”
In April, a Russian-language news portal, Agenstvo, reported that nearly half of what it said were 47 Russian diplomats in Hungary were connected to Russian intelligence.
Russia’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it would retaliate for the expulsions, accusing Hungary of “Russophobia,” its standard response to such actions since other European countries started sending Russian diplomats home in large numbers after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. European countries have expelled more than 300 Russian diplomats over the last four years.
Maria Zakharova, the Russian ministry’s spokeswoman, told the news agency Tass that Moscow’s response in this case would be “harsh and painful.”
Zalan Alkonyi, a Hungarian Russia expert who once worked at Hungary’s foreign ministry, said Russia was likely to expel Hungarian diplomats but refrain from violent actions to punish the new government.
Mr. Magyar’s government, he said, did not want a rupture but “is trying to signal to our European allies that we are back and are doing our homework just like everyone else.”
The expulsions, he added, were probably not motivated by new information but were “a housecleaning that should have happened a long time ago.”
VSquare, an investigative news outlet, reported in May that Hungary had quietly expelled a 36-year-old Russian diplomat, Artur Sushkov. Hungary’s counterintelligence service had asked Mr. Orban’s government, before it lost power, to expel Mr. Sushkov but the request was refused to avoid upsetting Moscow, the report said.
Mr. Orban, though he rose to prominence in 1989 by demanding that Soviet troops left Hungary, took an increasingly pro-Kremlin line during his last years in power, casting Ukraine rather than Russia as the main threat to European security. He also looked to Moscow for cheap gas and oil when other members of the European Union were trying to reduce their dependence on Russian supplies.
Mr. Magyar’s government has little room for maneuver on energy, especially sine a summer heat wave that threatened electricity generation at Hungary’s only nuclear power plant. Dry weather cut the supply of water from the Danube River needed to cool it.
But Mr. Magyar has sought to improve previously strained relations with the European Union and ended Hungary’s role as what Mr. Orban’s critics saw as a Russian “Trojan horse” within the bloc. Mr. Orban obstructed aid to Ukraine, tried to water down European sanctions on Russia and mostly ignored intelligence service warnings about Moscow’s diplomats.
“When everyone else was expelling Russian diplomats, the Russian Embassy in Budapest was growing bigger,” Mr. Alkonyi said.
The post Hungary Expels 10 Russian Diplomats, Signaling a Shift appeared first on New York Times.
