Kremlin sources say Russia is no longer ruling out defeat for Orban’s party in Hungary elections

Russia’s Kremlin is acknowledging that Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party may lose Hungary’s elections on April 12, two sources close to the political bloc of Russia’s Presidential Administration told Meduza.

“At first there was hope that Orban and his political strategists could turn things around and win on party lists. Then a win based on single-member districts became the preferred scenario. Now [the Kremlin] is not ruling out that even that won’t happen,” one of the sources said.

The Financial Times and The Washington Post had earlier reported that Russia has been actively working to help Fidesz win the election. According to those reports, Russia’s Presidential Administration approved a plan to boost Fidesz’s ratings developed by political consultants from Ilya Gambashidze’s Agency for Social Design.

The plan reportedly called for promoting Orban’s image on social media as a “strong leader with friends around the world,” as well as “information attacks” on his main rivals — the Tisza party led by Peter Magyar. Magyar, in particular, was to be portrayed as an “EU puppet,” the Financial Times and The Washington Post reported.

Russia’s embassy has denied that Russia is interfering in Hungary’s election campaign, and the Kremlin called the FT’s reporting “fake news.”

One of Meduza’s sources said that “there’s no actual management of Orban’s campaign from the Presidential Administration, of course, but there is ‘assistance’ on the social media side.”

That source and a political consultant working with the Kremlin both said that if Orban’s party loses, state-controlled Russian media will frame it as a “color revolution” engineered by the European Union.

As for Vladimir Putin, Orban himself and his team will be blamed for the defeat. “Even with our support, they couldn’t pull it off,” one of Meduza’s sources said.

Fidesz, the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — considered one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies in Europe — is trailing Peter Magyar’s Tisza party in the latest opinion polls. A significant share of voters said they had not yet decided how to vote on April 12.

U.S. President Donald Trump publicly endorsed Orban, calling him a “true friend, fighter, and winner.” U.S. Vice President JD Vance also visited Hungary in April, a trip widely seen as a further sign of White House support.