A leaked phone call shows that Budapest sought Kremlin assistance to influence Slovakia’s parliamentary vote — and that the request came directly from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Days before Slovakia’s parliamentary elections in February 2020, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó called Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with an unusual request. It was not routine diplomacy. Acting on direct instructions from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Szijjártó asked Moscow to help keep a friendly political coalition in power in a neighbouring ally — and the Kremlin’s response was warm.
The full, unredacted transcript of that conversation was published for the first time this week by Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi, together with the Ján Kuciak Investigative Centre. As The Slovak Spectator reports, the call had been partially disclosed in 2024, but the complete version only became public now. It was intercepted by a European intelligence service whose identity Panyi has chosen to protect.
“The Prime Minister Asked Me to Call”
The transcript reveals the full mechanics of the request. Szijjártó opened by telling Lavrov he was calling on behalf of Orbán personally — the Hungarian prime minister had instructed him to make the approach. “As you know, there are elections coming up in Slovakia on 29.02, and it is of key importance to us that the coalition there would continue,” he said. Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini — now Slovakia’s president — had visited Budapest the day before and asked Hungary to arrange a last-minute meeting for him in Moscow. Even a half-hour audience with the Russian prime minister, Szijjártó explained, would be enough. Pellegrini himself had told the Hungarians that such a visit would matter more to Slovak voters than a trip to Washington.
Szijjártó also framed the Slovak political landscape in terms that mirror standard Kremlin talking points. The opposition, he told Lavrov, were “Soros people”—a label routinely weaponised by pro-Kremlin actors across Central and Eastern Europe to delegitimise liberal and pro-European politicians. He added that it was also critical for Andrej Danko’s Slovak National Party to clear the five per cent electoral threshold. A victory for the opposition, Szijjártó warned, “would be a tragedy for Central European cooperation”.
When Lavrov signalled his willingness to help, Szijjártó responded: “You have no idea how grateful I am that we are having this conversation. It is a sign of friendship.” Lavrov closed the exchange with, “Any time, my friend. All the best.”
Years of Leaking From EU Council Meetings
The 2020 phone call does not stand alone. Its significance deepens considerably in light of recent reporting by The Washington Post, which revealed that Szijjártó’s contact with Lavrov was far more systematic than previously known. According to the newspaper, Hungary’s foreign minister regularly disclosed confidential information from closed meetings of the Council of the European Union, stepping out during breaks to brief his Russian counterpart in real time, directly from the venue.
“Through such calls, every single EU meeting for years has basically had Moscow behind the table,” an anonymous source told The Washington Post.
The revelations prompted an immediate response from Brussels. The European Commission publicly described the reports as “a matter of serious concern” and demanded clarification from Budapest, while Politico reported, citing five EU diplomats, that Brussels had already begun limiting the flow of sensitive material to Hungary, with key discussions increasingly shifted to smaller formats that exclude Budapest altogether. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk was blunt: “The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.”
Panyi, who has been investigating Szijjártó’s information transfers for years, writes on Facebook that he has spoken with officials from approximately seven EU member states in the course of his investigation — all of whom confirmed that Szijjártó has been regularly passing confidential information to Lavrov and other Russian officials. One of them is Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s former foreign minister, who said he had been warned of the privileged channel between Szijjártó and Lavrov as early as 2024. A senior security official from one EU country described the pattern to Panyi as constituting political intelligence activity.
A Preemptive Strike Against the Investigation
The publication of the full transcript this week was not without context. On the same morning, the Hungarian pro-government outlet Mandiner published what Panyi describes as a preemptive strike — a piece based on an intercepted conversation between the journalist and one of his sources, apparently intended to reframe and discredit his investigation before it could be completed. The Mandiner piece falsely claimed that Panyi had provided Szijjártó’s phone numbers to a foreign intelligence service; the journalist flatly denied this, explaining that he had sought the numbers to cross-reference them against information already obtained from a European security source. Panyi states that his investigation into Szijjártó’s transfers of confidential EU information to Moscow is in its final stages.
The Interference Narrative in Reverse
The timing of the transcript’s full release carries pointed political weight. Fico’s current governing coalition — comprising Smer, Hlas and SNS — has invested considerable effort in constructing a narrative about foreign interference allegedly working against them, a claim consequential enough to drive amendments to Slovakia’s Criminal Code in December.
The newly released transcript tells a different story. The interference was real; it was coordinated at the highest levels of the Hungarian government, and it was designed to keep Fico’s political bloc in power — not to undermine it. The very forces now loudest about external meddling were, five years ago, the ones soliciting it from Moscow.
As Insight News Media has reported, the European Parliament formally called on both Hungary and Slovakia to stop blocking new sanctions against Russia. Both governments have ignored that demand — and the leaked transcript helps explain why.
