Political Capital

Viktor Orbán's government is intentionally trying to provoke a conflict with Ukraine, because they see this as their only chance of winning the April 12 election where they're trailing the opposition considerably. On this incident: what I'm hearing from Hungarian government-connected sources is that the trucks and the bank employees were detained as part of a political operation. A fabricated tax authority (NAV) investigation was created as the legal basis, and counter-terrorism forces were sent in. According to the information — said to have originally come from Russian sources — one of the guards carrying the money was a former high-ranking Ukrainian national security officer. He was specifically targeted on equally fabricated money laundering charges. The other six Ukrainian guards were very likely detained illegally, even without a trumped-up legal basis. This is the kind of escalation we expected from Orbán. It's starting. Hungary's EU and NATO partners have a huge responsibility now, and in the coming weeks.