Leaked audio recordings reveal Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó systematically briefed Russia’s Sergey Lavrov on confidential EU deliberations and coordinated Budapest’s vetoes with Moscow.
The investigation, published on April 8 by VSquare in partnership with FRONTSTORY, Delfi Estonia, The Insider, and the Investigative Centre of Ján Kuciak, is the second instalment in a series documenting what its authors describe as a systematic operational relationship between Budapest and Moscow. The recordings span 2023 to 2025 and capture Szijjártó in a posture that multiple EU officials, quoted in the investigation, described as less that of a peer foreign minister than of an asset reporting to a handler. The timing is politically charged: Hungary’s parliamentary election falls on April 12, with Orbán’s Fidesz party trailing opposition leader Péter Magyar’s Tisza party by as many as twenty points in the polls. The revelations place Hungary’s Russia alignment, long treated as a diplomatic irritant by Brussels, in a categorically different light: not as an awkward foreign policy outlier but as an active channel through which Moscow has exercised influence over EU decision-making on Ukraine. The implications stretch beyond Budapest: if a NATO and EU member state has been functioning as an operational conduit for the Kremlin inside Europe’s core institutions, the question is no longer about Hungary’s foreign policy preferences — it is about the structural integrity of the EU’s security architecture.
The Recordings: What They Reveal
The most striking episode captured in the leaked audio dates to December 14, 2023, when EU leaders gathered in Brussels to vote on opening accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova. As VSquare reported, Szijjártó stepped out of the room during a break to call Lavrov and brief him in near real time on Hungary’s “blackmail strategy”. Lavrov’s response, captured on audio, was unambiguous: “Sometimes good-willed direct blackmailing is the best option.” Hungary’s blackmail did not work that day. Orbán eventually left the room for coffee, allowing the other 26 leaders to adopt the decision unanimously while Hungary abstained.
A second key episode occurred on July 2, 2024, the same day Orbán visited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. According to VSquare, Szijjártó called Lavrov immediately afterwards to relay the contents of the Orbán-Zelenskyy meeting and discussed arranging a visit by Orbán to Moscow ahead of the NATO summit in Washington. Crucially, these plans were kept secret from Hungary’s EU and NATO partners. When the Moscow visit was later reported by VSquare, European officials reacted with fury. As the leaked audio now confirms, the meeting had been choreographed between Budapest and Moscow in advance, with Szijjártó explicitly framing Orbán’s participation in Hungary’s rotating EU Council presidency as adding diplomatic weight to the visit.
“It is wild how Szijjártó begs for an invitation for Orbán to Moscow,” a senior EU official told VSquare. “Quite clearly, the Hungarians were deceiving the European Union.”
The recordings also capture an exchange in which Lavrov asked Szijjártó for an EU document related to Ukraine’s accession negotiations, specifically the framework governing minority language requirements. Szijjártó agreed without hesitation: “I will send it to you. It’s not a problem. I will send it to my embassy in Moscow, and my ambassador will forward it to your chief of staff, and then it’s at your disposal.” A senior EU official told the consortium with “99 per cent certainty” that the document in question was the negotiating framework, noting that while it was technically public, the exchange appeared designed to test the limits of Szijjártó’s compliance. A Western intelligence source quoted by VSquare was more direct: “This is like recruitment 101.”
A Pattern of Obstruction: From Vetoes to Blocked Billions
The VSquare recordings do not exist in a vacuum. They provide the backstage explanation for a pattern of obstruction that has been playing out in public for years — and whose consequences for Ukraine have been concrete and measurable.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Hungary has systematically used its EU veto to delay, dilute or block decisions on Ukraine support. In May 2023, Budapest blocked the disbursement of a €500 million EU military assistance package through the European Peace Facility, as documented by the Centre for Eastern Studies. It simultaneously threatened to veto the EU’s 11th sanctions package against Russia. In December 2023, Orbán vetoed the €50 billion Ukraine Facility entirely, leaving Kyiv without committed EU funding at a critical moment, as Euronews reported. He eventually lifted the veto in February 2024, but only after extracting concessions — and only after Germany, France and Italy applied direct personal pressure at the summit table.
The most recent episode is the most damaging. In March 2026, Orbán blocked a €90 billion loan to Ukraine approved by all other 27 member states, citing a dispute over the Druzhba pipeline — a Soviet-era route carrying Russian oil through Ukraine to Hungary. “I will never support any kind of decision here which is in favour of Ukraine,” Orbán declared at the summit. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called it “an act of gross disloyalty” and said “there has never been anything like it,” as The Columbian reported. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo was more direct: “He’s using Ukraine as a weapon in his election campaign, and it’s not good.”
As the Washington Post reported in February 2026, Hungary was at that point holding up approximately $105 billion in European funding for Ukraine — a roadblock for Kyiv as peace negotiations with Russia remained elusive and US support uncertain.
The through-line connecting these episodes is precisely what the VSquare recordings now confirm: that Hungary’s vetoes were not independent foreign policy decisions driven by genuine national interest concerns but coordinated positions developed in active consultation with Moscow. When Szijjártó called Lavrov from the corridor of the December 2023 European Council to relay Hungary’s “blackmail strategy”, he was not acting as a peer foreign minister — he was reporting to the party whose interests that strategy served.
Minority Rights as a Weapon
A recurring theme across the recordings is the deliberate weaponisation of minority rights language to obstruct Ukraine’s EU accession. In a June 17, 2024 call, Szijjártó briefed Lavrov on how Hungary was using its eleven-point list of demands regarding the Hungarian minority in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region as leverage within EU accession negotiations. Lavrov steered the conversation toward the “protection of Russian-speaking minorities” as an additional instrument to block Ukraine’s integration path. Szijjártó affirmed the logic, telling Lavrov that minority rights represented a “universal principle of the Council of Europe — one day it is your minority, and then the next day ours.”
As VSquare noted, a senior EU official reacted to this exchange with particular force: “It makes me want to vomit how Szijjártó discusses with the aggressor how to put pressure on Ukraine. At the same time, Szijjártó is actually also lying to Lavrov because the negotiating framework does not refer to other countries or minorities but only speaks about Ukraine’s agreements with EU member states.”
The same recordings confirm that the Budapest-Moscow coordination extended to sanctions policy. Szijjártó mentioned coordinating with Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár on blocking the EU’s 18th sanctions package and described the European Commission’s proposal to phase out Russian energy imports as a “stupid idiot proposal” — while actively seeking Moscow’s assistance in maintaining payment mechanisms for Russian gas via Hungary’s OTP Bank.
Brussels Responds
The EU’s institutional reaction to the April 8 publication was swift. As European Pravda reported, European Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho stated on April 9 that the revelations “highlight a troubling possibility of cooperation between the government of an EU member state and Russia — this means actively working against the security and interests of the EU and all its citizens.” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is to raise the issue directly with EU member state leaders.
A group of Members of the European Parliament simultaneously wrote to Parliament President Roberta Metsola, warning that “pro-Russian MEPs with links to Putin’s regime are still able to attend in camera committee meetings and hire staff without undergoing proper security or open-source screening,” as European Pravda reported. The letter called for immediate restrictions on access to classified information for openly pro-Russian members. Several member states have also raised the prospect of invoking Article 7 of the EU Treaty — a mechanism that could ultimately strip Hungary of its voting rights in the Council — though no formal proceedings have been initiated as of April 9.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated it was clear Hungary was “dependent” on Russia in the positions it adopted at the EU level, according to The Irish Times. Opposition leader Péter Magyar described Szijjártó’s conduct as “an open betrayal of Hungarian and European interests,” as reported by Euronews.
Szijjártó responded on social media, calling the publication “an unusually crude and open secret service intervention” into the election campaign and insisting the recordings showed nothing more than Hungary’s publicly stated positions on peace, energy, and sanctions.
How Russian State Media Covered It: Strategic Silence and Counter-Narrative
Russian state media’s response to the April 8 investigation followed a pattern that has become familiar: near-total silence on the substance, combined with a coordinated counter-narrative operation to discredit the messenger and reframe the story.
TASS published no coverage of either the April 8 or the earlier March 31 instalment of the VSquare investigation. Rossiyskaya Gazeta similarly produced nothing on either publication. RIA Novosti‘s closest engagement with the material was a brief mention of Szijjártó’s own dismissal, quoting him as saying the recordings “proved that I say the same thing publicly as I do on the phone. Excellent work!”
- https://ria.ru/20260404/vengriya-2085056495.html
The only official Russian comment on the underlying allegations came from Lavrov himself on April 5, carried by Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. Asked about the recordings, he stated: “I believe there are no secrets in the world, which is why I never discuss forbidden topics with foreign partners. But when it comes to illegally imposed sanctions against Russian citizens, that is not espionage — that is the direct duty of diplomats, to defend the rights of their compatriots.”
- https://lenta.ru/news/2026/04/05/lavrov-otreagiroval-na-soobschenie-o-proslushke-ego-razgovora-s-siyyarto/
- https://www.gazeta.ru/politics/news/2026/04/05/28206145.shtml
Russian MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed the reports by claiming Hungary’s enemies had “an inflamed imagination”.
- https://ria.ru/20260323/es-2082325836.html
In place of substance, Russian state media deployed five distinct counter-narratives across the weeks surrounding the investigation’s publication.
RT‘s most concerted effort focused not on what the recordings revealed but on discrediting the journalist who helped obtain them. In a piece titled “Hungary probes EU-funded journalist for espionage,” RT framed VSquare editor Szabolcs Panyi as a foreign intelligence asset, citing his outlet’s funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the German Marshall Fund. Hungarian government officials were quoted without challenge, including a claim that Panyi “was found to have been spying against his own country in collaboration with a foreign state.” Szijjártó’s contacts with Lavrov were normalised with the observation that “contributing to relations between two states, if it is not contrary to Hungarian interests, is called diplomacy.”
- https://www.rt.com/news/636298-hungary-espionage-journalist-szijjarto/
RT’s most analytically ambitious piece drew an explicit parallel between the VSquare investigation and the discredited Trump-Russia collusion probe, under the headline “Battle for Hungary: How the Russiagate blueprint has been unleashed against Orbán.” The article described the investigation as “a rare look into how bureaucrats, journalists, and spies run a regime-change operation in real time”, arguing that “the parallels between Russiagate and the information war playing out in Hungary are unmistakable.” It also pre-emptively sought to delegitimise a potential Fidesz defeat, warning that “the flood of Russia conspiracies from outlets like VSquare, Politico, and the Washington Post serves another vital purpose: to delegitimise his victory and justify reprisals from Brussels.”
- https://www.rt.com/news/636072-szijjarto-wiretapping-hungary-election/
RIA Novosti ran a piece headlined “Ukraine is preparing a Maidan in Hungary”, framing the election as a battle against foreign-orchestrated destabilisation and arguing that “the word Maidan is heard more and more clearly, especially given Ukraine’s extensive involvement in Hungarian elections.” A separate piece portrayed the outcome in existential terms: “Whether the country will become a colony of Ukraine and enter the war with Russia depends on the outcome.”
- https://ria.ru/20260323/vengriya-2082254420.html
- https://ria.ru/20260317/vengriya-2081035522.html
RT extended the Maidan framing further, warning that “if Orbán tries to steal this — and he almost certainly will — it’ll be Euromaidan on steroids in an EU/NATO country,” while accusing the opposition of “building the narrative that if they lose the election, then this is an illegitimate result.”
- https://www.rt.com/news/636875-hungary-ukraine-maidan-orban/
RIA Novosti‘s analysis of the broader EU response portrayed Brussels as plotting punishment regardless of the election outcome, quoting a Russian expert as saying “the only thing Orbán does is express an opinion that the European Commission doesn’t like,” while TASS amplified Orbán’s own declaration that “in the next hundred years, there will be no parliament in Hungary that would vote for Ukraine’s accession to the EU.”
- https://ria.ru/20260404/vengriya-2085056495.html
- https://tass.com/world/2083595
- https://tass.com/world/2075847
On the same day the April 8 investigation was published, RIA Novosti ran a profile of opposition leader Péter Magyar noting that he has “not addressed the topic of Russia directly” but that Fidesz “accuses him of readiness to follow Brussels’ course without question, including on the question of aid to Kyiv” — a framing designed to make alignment with EU policy on Ukraine sound like a liability rather than a norm.
- https://ria.ru/20260408/madyar-2085878062.html
The pattern is consistent: Russian state media have not engaged with a single specific revelation from the VSquare investigation — not Lavrov’s endorsement of “good-willed direct blackmailing”, not Szijjártó’s offer to route EU documents through Hungary’s Moscow embassy, not the coordination on weaponising minority rights. The entire apparatus instead pivoted to discrediting the messenger, normalising the contacts as routine diplomacy, and framing the investigation as a Western regime-change operation — a narrative architecture that shields both Moscow and Budapest while positioning Orbán as the victim of the same forces that once targeted Trump.
What It Means for Ukraine and the EU
The recordings do more than document a compromised bilateral relationship. They provide the most detailed evidence yet of how Russia has been able to exercise structural influence over EU decision-making on Ukraine without firing a single shot, through a member state willing to act, in the words of one senior EU official quoted by VSquare, as something “approximating a fifth column in Brussels.”
The practical consequences have been significant. Hungary’s coordinated vetoes delayed the opening of Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations, blocked or diluted multiple sanctions packages, and created space for Russia to present the EU as internally divided on Ukraine support. The minority rights gambit, as the recordings confirm, was not a genuine policy position but a negotiating instrument developed in coordination with the very country using the same language to justify its invasion.
With Hungary’s election on April 12 and Fidesz trailing badly in the polls, the political context may be about to shift. Szijjártó’s dismissal of the leaks as foreign interference signals that Budapest intends to contest the investigation’s legitimacy regardless of the electoral outcome. Whether the next Hungarian government chooses a different path will depend on April 12. But the institutional question the recordings raise does not resolve with an election result: Brussels now knows that for at least two years, one of its member states was running a parallel foreign policy in active coordination with the country whose war it was supposed to be collectively resisting.
