Viktor Orban made his loyalties clear when he landed in the country Georgia this week.
As protesters disputed an election victory for its pro-Russian leadership, Hungary’s prime minister congratulated the country for choosing not to become the next Ukraine.
The trip to Tbilisi was a bold move, even for a leader who has made no secret of his coziness with Russia and disregard for the European Union. But with all eyes now on voting in the U.S., the timing was as important as the optics.
A win for his ally Donald Trump on Tuesday could make Orban the go-to person in Europe for the next U.S. president, according to a person familiar with the thinking in Budapest. And with Russia’s war in Ukraine, Europe’s security and trade relations with China all in flux, Orban is relishing that prospect.
The pair forged a transatlantic camaraderie going back to Orban’s early endorsement of Trump in 2016. More recently, Orban lauded the Republican nominee as the only person who can bring a quick end to the war in Ukraine. Over the summer, Orban said his aides “were deeply involved” with the team working on Trump’s policy program for the next four years.
For his part, Trump has praised the Hungarian’s leadership. Orban diluted sanctions against Russia, opposed aid for Ukraine and vetoed critical statements on China. Within days of Hungary assuming the EU’s rotating presidency in July, Orban travelled to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin, blindsiding European and NATO allies and even his own cabinet.
Hungarian foreign policy is about “regime survival,” said Zsuzsanna Vegh, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. If Trump returns to the White House, Orban might feel “vindicated, seeing a leader with a similar political profile leading the most powerful country on the globe,” she said.
The boost would be timely for Orban, who until recently governed with little hindrance since returning to power in 2010. At home, he faces a new, more credible rival ahead of Hungary’s 2026 election. The economy, meantime, has taken a beating. A report this week showed it’s now back in recession.
Abroad, he’s been playing up his status as the EU’s chief disruptor. Over the summer, he resumed attacks on Brussels over LGBTQ rights and immigration while lauding Putin’s “rational,” strongly led Russia. At Hungary’s annual commemoration of the 1956 uprising on Oct. 23, he said the nation should stand up to the EU like it did to the Soviets.
In Georgia, he hailed the win for pro-Kremlin billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili’s party as fair, dismissing his EU counterparts for duplicity. “European politics has its handbook,” Orban said on Tuesday. “When liberal parties win, there is democracy. When conservatives win, there is not.”
How Orban, 61, cemented his role as the ringleader for the continent’s nationalists goes back to the refugee crisis of 2015 when he built a fence along Hungary’s southern border and cast himself as the defender of Christian Europe.
The following 18 months saw populists take power in Poland, Britain vote to leave the EU and Trump win the American presidency, events that played into Orban’s central belief that liberal democracy was dying and that he was ahead of the curve. Now the return of Trump would mean the U.S. will “improve ideologically, giving up on the export of democracy,” Orban said in the summer.
It’s a narrative he’s been keen to export, and fund. Hungarian entities have provided money for nationalists in France, Spain and, most recently, North Macedonia.
The day before he cast a lone figure at a summit of European leaders in Brussels last month, he convened his new far-right political group, Patriots for Europe. At Maison de Hongrie, a 19th century villa in the city that Orban’s government bought last year, he hosted the likes of French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen and Andrej Babis, the Czech billionaire eying a return to power.
But what he has most in common with Trump is that he reckons the world is — and should be — run by leaders doing backroom deals rather than institutions with accountability and transparency, according to observers who have followed him over the years.
For all its democratic processes, that also reflects his experience with the EU, said Andras Toth-Czifra, a political analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in New York. One example is Orban’s close ties to German industry, giving him influence in the biggest European economy while he clashed with Brussels, he said.
Another is the revolving door of U.S. conservative figures in Budapest for the annual CPAC satellite conference hosted by a government-funded Hungarian organization. That isn’t necessarily because of deeply shared beliefs, but more a vehicle for Orban’s Fidesz party to network internationally, Toth-Czifra said.
“He’s survived this long because so far he has known which battles to pick in the EU and NATO,” he said. “But with Hungary’s economic situation and his rising opposition, this is not a risk-free adventure any more. He is banking on a lot of “ifs” with his long bet with Trump — but it may still pay off.”
That adventure already came with a cost. The EU is still withholding about €20 billion ($22 billion) of funding earmarked for Hungary because of concerns over graft and rule-of-law after Orban named loyalists to the heads of state institutions and the highest levels of the judiciary. Under Orban, the country slid to bottom among EU members in the annual Transparency International corruption index.
Indeed, shielding Hungary from U.S. criticism over the rollback of democracy and his affinity with Russia would be one of the biggest boons for Orban from a Trump presidency.
A “Make America Great Again” focus under Trump would mean less attention on Hungary and Europe, said Balazs Orban, the political director charged with building links to Trump’s camp and think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation and media personalities like Tucker Carlson.
“A Trump presidency would be great for everybody,” Balazs Orban, who is no relation of the premier, said in an interview on the sidelines of the EU summit in Brussels last month. “The essence of his foreign policy is an American interest-based policy, which is good, because then Europe can also pursue a policy based on European interests.”
What those interests are is where Orban diverges from his counterparts in Berlin and Paris.
The prime minister’s aides have sought to portray his transformation from a liberal, anti-communist student firebrand in the late 1980s to a centre-right leader in the late 1990s and then a far-right icon as someone who anticipated generational shifts in the global political landscape.
But critics like opposition leader Peter Magyar, a former Orban supporter whose party has overtaken Fidesz in some recent polls, say he’s driven more by power and money. Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen excoriated Orban for supporting Russia and for economic policies that discriminate against foreign companies while awarding contracts to a small group.
Orban’s isolation of Hungary from the political mainstream in Europe while making friends elsewhere will now be tested. For all his reputation as the “Trump whisperer,” his importance as a middleman is overblown, according to Vegh at the German Marshall Fund.
There’s also the issue of China, which Orban has courted for billions of euros of investment. Given Trump’s stance on the country, Orban may not be as free as he thinks to pursue those ties, Vegh said. Trump wants to ratchet up tariffs against China, while Orban opposed EU barriers on Chinese-made electric vehicles, an industry that’s increasingly vital to the Hungarian economy.
Still, no leader can boast such cordial access to Moscow and Beijing while also wielding a veto within the EU.
Orban’s freewheeling diplomacy in July was case in point. His self-style “peace mission” to Moscow following a visit to Kyiv was such a closely guarded secret that even EU Affairs Minister Janos Boka, the point-person to manage the Hungarian EU presidency, was in the dark, according to two people familiar with the situation.
They asked not to be named citing political sensitivities, while Boka declined to confirm or deny whether he had known about the trip in an interview in Brussels.
The visit prompted many EU nations to downgrade their representation at events in Budapest. But for Orban, it was a success by raising his visibility as he met with the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and China in quick succession, according to one of the people.
In retrospect, the most important audience may have been the one at the end of the itinerary — in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. Orban met Trump at his resort after a stopover at a NATO summit in Washington.
The pair posted a picture showing them giving a thumbs up and Orban saying “he’s going to solve it” — a reference to the war in Ukraine.
For now, it’s a coin-toss election before Orban hosts back-to-back European summits in Budapest next week. A win for Democrat Kamala Harris could help Europe turn up the pressure on Orban. Should Trump win, some EU diplomats are worried Orban might invite him to dial into one of the meetings.
As one person familiar with the thinking put it: the meetings will either be opportunities for Orban to shine at the vanguard of Europe’s nationalist movement or a chance for EU leaders to take a dig at the Hungarian leader on his home turf.
“Just got off the phone with President @realDonaldTrump,” Orban wrote on social media platform X on Oct. 31. “I wished him the best of luck for next Tuesday. Only five days to go. Fingers crossed.”
— With assistance from Veronika Gulyas, Marton Kasnyik and Max Ramsay.