Hungary FM: Yet Another Tisza Party Lie Exposed

Another lie spread by the Tisza Party was exposed over the past week, as it turned out that the police officer who stepped forward is not a hero, but simply did not know about a counterintelligence operation, said Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto on Kossuth Radio’s Sunday news program.

What happened this week was “a well-organized Ukrainian deployment, a full-scale disinformation campaign, using very serious resources (...), mobilizing an entire system” but “this disinformation campaign burst yesterday, just like all previous lies during the election campaign,” said Peter Szijjarto.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto (Photo: MTI/Tamas Purger)

He recalled that the Tisza Party’s IT specialist

was recruited by the Ukrainians, they tried to turn him into a Ukrainian spy,

and he was also put in contact with individuals who had taken part in attacks against the Druzhba oil pipeline. He pointed out that in such cases, the Constitution Protection Office has a duty to carry out the necessary counterintelligence actions. However, the police officer who went public this week could not have known about this.

he is not a hero, he simply did not know about the counterintelligence operation,

he emphasized, adding that developments over the past week all prove that the Ukrainians are doing everything they can to interfere in Hungary’s parliamentary elections and to bring the Tisza Party to power.

As he explained, “the Ukrainians organized an oil blockade, they want to create a total energy blockade, they carry out wiretapping, they issue death threats against the prime minister, and they move convoys of black money back and forth across Hungary.” In practical terms, he said, under the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky, “Ukraine has turned Hungary into an intelligence operation zone,” stressing that it must not be allowed that “Zelensky forms a government in Hungary.”

Peter Szijjarto stressed that this is exactly what they want:

a pro-Ukraine government with a pro-Ukraine prime minister, which would then agree to drag Hungary into the war, take Hungarians’ money to Ukraine, bring Ukraine into the European Union, triple household utility bills in Hungary, and push fuel prices above 1,000 forints by forcibly cutting us off from cheap Russian energy sources,

he listed. Regarding reports that his own phone may previously have been wiretapped, Peter Szijjarto said it can be assumed that the journalist who posted about it “maintained contacts with multiple foreign intelligence services,” and he is certain that “these actions seriously endanger Hungary’s sovereignty.”

He raised the question of how sovereignty could be expected from a government that

can be told by a journalist maintaining active connections with foreign intelligence services who to employ,

referring to remarks by journalist Szabolcs Panyi suggesting he could make recommendations about who might serve in a potential Tisza government. According to the minister, the events of the past week have been about “Tisza exposures,” showing that Hungary’s sovereignty would be in serious danger if the Tisza Party were to win the parliamentary elections. In that case, he argued, foreign intelligence services would take control in Hungary, which must not be allowed.

Regarding a Ukrainian money courier stopped in Hungary, he said it emerged this week that some of the funds had been spent in Hungary. He added that “it is obvious that when there is foreign interference in an election, there is also a financial component,” pointing to how such black money could be used.

Peter Szijjarto argued that in Ukraine, “the war has essentially become a business model,” and that the country has earned far more money from the war than it could have from peace.

According to him, it is clear that “part of the money of a deeply corrupt Ukrainian war regime could have ended up in Hungary as black money, with actors whom the Ukrainians want to see in power (…) this is a realistic scenario.”

Hungary's parliamentary election is therefore a decisive issue, he said, because it will determine whether Hungary can stay out of the war raging in the neighboring country, or whether “Hungarian young people will be taken as soldiers to the front in Ukraine, Hungarians’ money will be taken to Ukraine, and even our children’s and grandchildren’s generations will be burdened with debt to finance a corrupt Ukrainian war mafia.”

Peter Szijjarto emphasized that the current sovereign national government ensures that Hungary stays out of the war, that Hungarians’ money is not sent to Ukraine, and that Ukraine cannot bring its war into the European Union. Meanwhile, he said, the Ukrainians

want all of Europe to go to war, want Europeans' money to be spent on Ukraine’s functioning, and want Ukraine to enter the European Union.

That is why, he argued, they are carrying out “a series of tough intelligence interventions” during the Hungarian election process. “We must win the election, and after the election we must continue the sovereign national policy, the very same policy that has so far ensured that we have protected Hungary from the war and preserved Hungary’s peace and security,”

Peter Szijjarto said on public radio.

Cover photo: Peter Szijjarto, Hungary's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Photo: MTI)