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The Hungarian government has filed charges against one of the country’s most prominent investigative journalists, accusing him of spying for Ukraine, as officials grapple with the fallout of allegations that Budapest shared confidential EU information with Moscow.
The claims of espionage cap off a tumultuous week in Hungarian politics, in which relations with the EU plummeted to new lows and polls suggested that Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party is still lagging behind in support before next month’s election.
At the heart of the latest row were allegations that Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had routinely dialled up his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to pass on the details of confidential EU meetings.
Szijjártó first dismissed the allegation, but later acknowledged that he had conferred with Lavrov before and after EU foreign minister meetings about their agenda and decisions, describing such conversations as “diplomacy”.
After the leading opposition candidate, Péter Magyar, said that, on the contrary, the allegations, could amount to treason if confirmed, Orbán ordered an investigation into what he called the “wire-tapping” of Szijjártó.
The announcement came after a pro-government publication published an article claiming that foreign intelligence agencies had eavesdropped on Szijjártó with the help of a Hungarian journalist, Szabolcs Panyi.
The report included an edited recording, made without Panyi’s knowledge, in which Panyi appeared to speak to a source about a phone number used by Szijjártó as part of an investigation into the Hungarian minister’s communications with his Russian counterpart.
On Thursday, Orbán’s chief of staff, Gergely Gulyás, said charges would be filed against Panyi, who he alleged had “spied against his own country in cooperation with a foreign state”.
“More and more Ukrainian spies are being exposed in Hungary,” said Gulyás, echoing Orbán’s campaign strategy to convince voters that Hungary’s greatest threat lies in the war next door in Ukraine.
Writing on social media on Thursday, Panyi denied any wrongdoing. “Accusing investigative journalists of espionage is virtually unprecedented in the 21st century for a member state of the European Union,” he wrote. “This is really something more typical of Putin’s Russia, Belarus, and similar regimes.”
He rejected the allegation that he had collaborated with any foreign intelligence service in the wiretapping or surveillance of Szijjártó. “On the contrary, I tried to collect and verify, after the fact, information and fragments of information that had emerged years earlier regarding the communication between Szijjártó and Lavrov,” he wrote. “Since 2023, I have been specifically investigating the suspicion that the relationship between Péter Szijjártó and Russian officials may have crossed legal boundaries.”
The accusations of espionage come as Orbán and his Fidesz party, who have long faced criticism for weakening democratic institutions, eroding media freedom and undermining the rule of law, face an unprecedented challenge from Magyar, a former top member of Fidesz.
As Hungarians grapple with economic stagnation, the rising cost of living and fraying social services, polls have suggested that Orbán and Fidesz are trailing behind Magyar’s opposition Tisza party.
The hard-fought campaign is being closely watched around the world, as it could have deep implications for Europe as well as rightwing political forces.
Foreign interference has seemingly been rife. Several media outlets have alleged that Russian intelligence agencies as well as disinformation networks with links to Russia are seeking to sway the election in Orbán’s favour while, across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed Orbán and the US vice-president, JD Vance, is preparing to visit the country before the 12 April election.
Earlier this week, as it became clear that the Hungarian government was targeting Panyi, one of the outlets that he works for, VSquare, said Hungary’s government was “resorting to authoritarian tactics to target a journalist whose reporting exposes truths inconvenient to the regime”.
In a statement, it added: “This is the Kremlin’s modus operandi: a playbook straight out of Soviet manuals written at Lubyanka.”
It is not the first time that Panyi, who also works for the Hungarian non-profit investigative outlet Direkt36, has ended up in the government’s sights. In 2021, an investigation found that Panyi’s phone had been infected with Pegasus spyware, along with at least 10 lawyers, an opposition politician and at least four other journalists.
A senior government official in Orbán’s party later acknowledged that the Hungarian government had acquired the software.
