Orbán (sort of) slaps down aide who said Hungary would surrender to Russia

Viktor Orbán’s top aide issued a half-hearted apology on Friday after his controversial comments on Ukraine were called out by the Hungarian prime minister.

Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s political director (no relation), said he hadn’t intended to cause “any misunderstanding” when he signaled during an interview that Hungary would have lain down to the Russian army if it had been in Ukraine’s position.

“It was a mistake on my part, and if I have offended anyone, I apologize,” he wrote in his Facebook post, just a few hours after Viktor Orbán also described his top aide’s comments as a “mistake.” 

Balázs Orbán claimed earlier it was a lesson learned from Hungary’s own unsuccessful battle against the Russians in 1956. The remarks quickly mushroomed into a scandal with opposition politicians calling for the aide to resign.

But while he gently chided the key adviser, Viktor Orbán said that the words were largely misinterpreted.

“We have to keep a clear head, so when we talk about such sensitive issues we have to be very precise and leave no doubt about our own position,” Viktor Orbán said during an interview on Hungarian state radio Friday morning. “Now my political director has phrased his words in a confusing way, which is a mistake in this context, because our community is rooted in the 1956 revolution, it grew out of it.”

The prime minister was referring to the beginning of his political career, when he spoke in June 1989 at the reburial of Imre Nagy, prime minister during the 1956 revolution, who was executed by the Soviet-backed new communist regime. 

In that speech 35 years ago, Viktor Orbán called for the Soviet army to leave Hungary. Later, as a liberal, then center-right politician, he was known for his pro-Atlanticist, anti-Russian views. But as he has moved further to the right after coming to power in 2010, he has also inched closer to Russia, and even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 wasn’t enough to sever ties.

But Viktor Orbán said his party is still upholding the memory of “the heroes of 1956,” and he has no doubt that Balázs Orbán would stand up and fight for his country if needed.

“He would be with us in the Corvin Passage,” Viktor Orbán said, referring to the best-known battle of Hungary’s — ultimately defeated — freedom fighters against the Soviet invaders. 

Later, in his apology, Balázs Orbán echoed the analogy: “If the need arises, I will be there with a gun in my hand at the Corvin Passage.”

However, Viktor Orbán warned his namesake not to bring the memory of 1956 into the current political discourse, as Hungary presses against the EU position on support for Ukraine’s resistance.

“This debate on the war should not include the events and heroes of Hungarian history, which are sacred and inviolable for us, but rather keep them out of it,” he said. “I do not want the shadow of the Ukrainian-Russian war to be cast over the memory of the freedom fighters of 1956, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.”

This story has been updated.