In the last couple of months the Hungarian government has been so preoccupied with George Soros’s evil empire that it has not noticed a shift in public opinion on its increasingly close relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Hungarians are getting fed up with Russian influence, which is noticeable wherever they look. In March, Publicus Intézet conducted a poll which revealed that the majority of Hungarians consider Viktor Orbán’s pet project, the extension of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, to be contrary to Hungarian interests. Better informed people are convinced that the City of Budapest was forced to buy refurbished outmoded metro cars from Russia–cars that kept breaking down–in order to please the Russians.

When Bernadett Szél of LMP accuses Fidesz members of parliament of being Russian agents, when anti-Russian slogans are chanted at demonstrations, and when the Party of the Two-tailed Dog carries posters like the ones shown here, we can see that Orbán’s shameless courting of Putin’s Russia is starting to backfire at home.

By now many perfectly sane people are convinced that Orbán’s abrupt foreign policy turnabout when he was reelected prime minister in 2010 was not exactly voluntary. Until then, Orbán had been fiercely anti-Russian. Russian-Hungarian relations, way before Russia’s Putinization, were seriously strained during Orbán’s tenure as prime minister between 1998 and 2002. It took the socialist-liberal government years to normalize relations between the two countries. While in opposition, Orbán criticized any and all moves toward closer relations with Russia, especially Ferenc Gyurcsány’s friendly personal relations with Vladimir Putin after 2006. But then, in 2009, Orbán showed up in Moscow as the head of Fidesz to attend the congress of Putin’s party, United Russia.

It was Ferenc Gyurcsány who the other day said publicly what thousands of people suspect: that Vladimir Putin has something on Viktor Orbán which caused him to change course practically overnight. On April 8 Gyurcsány gave a long interview to Magyar Nemzet in which he claimed that “Viktor Orbán’s about-face can be logically explained only by assuming that the Russians are blackmailing him.” Upon further questioning, he indicated that he knows about certain aspects of Orbán’s life that might lend themselves to blackmail. On April 21 he went further in an interview on ATV’s Egyenes beszéd. “I know the following: the Russians have confronted the prime minister with certain facts and documents which are so embarrassing that he would think five times before he would reject Putin’s demands.” Those who are in possession of the documents can be forced to release them only if the documents are required as evidence in a court of law. Therefore, Gyurcsány continued, “the prime minister should sue me over this accusation if he thinks that what I’m saying is untrue. In that case, I will prove my assertion.”

This is a pretty startling announcement from a former prime minister, but the fact is that a fair number of commentators, politicians, and ordinary citizens have been convinced for some time that this recent Russian-Hungarian love affair raises red flags. Two politicians who were interviewed right after Gyurcsány, neither of them a Gyurcsány fan, didn’t reject the possibility. On the contrary.

Meanwhile an activist, Gergő Komáromy, to demonstrate his opposition to Orbán’s cozy relationship with Putin, threw (washable) yellow paint on the Soviet War Memorial, which stands on Liberty Square right across from the U.S. Embassy. Komáromy received a fine of 30,000 forints (around $100), a much milder sentence than Márton Gulyás got for a lesser act. But that was not the end of the story. A few days later Komáromy was contacted by a Chechen-born Russian citizen, Magomed Dasaev, who demanded a public apology. After Dasaev informed him that he is a nice Chechen but there are others who are not so nice and might be after him and his family, Komáromy readily agreed to a public apology both in Hungarian and in English. The video that was put online was a great hit among Russian internet users. In no time close to 200,000 people watched the Hungarian’s humiliation. For good measure even the Russian Foreign Ministry got into the fray, calling attention to the bilateral agreements on Soviet and Russian military memorials in Hungary.

That a Chechen decided to take things into his own hands and threaten a Hungarian citizen was too much even for András Stumpf of the conservative Válasz. He found the video “chilling.” The Fidesz government, which prides itself on being a “national government,” should be national now and raise its voice against a Chechen forcing a Hungarian citizen to be humiliated in front of everybody. The Russians “look upon this city as their predecessors used to. As a colony, their own little kindergarten. So, it is really time for all of us to be national.”

Bernadett Szél (LMP), a member of the parliamentary committee on national security, moved into action. She finds it unacceptable that neither the Hungarian intelligence community nor the prime minister speaks out against “Russian pseudo civilians telling Hungarian citizens how they can protest the government’s policies.” Her view is shared by Zsolt Molnár (MSZP), chairman of the committee. The committee will call on the Budapest police and the Office for the Defense of the Constitution for an explanation. What happened cannot be tolerated in an EU country, Molnár said.

Others called attention to mysterious Chechens showing up in Moscow. As Krisztián Ungváry put it, “In the beginning, the Chechen only asks; then he sends the head of a dead animal; and finally someone is hit by a car.” Attila Ara-Kovács recalled a group photo from 2006 on which one can see Anna Politkovskaia, Stanislav Markelov, and Natalia Estemirova. What they have in common is that by now all three are dead, killed by Chechen hit men. And, of course, there is the case of Boris Nemtsov, who was killed practically in front of the Kremlin, also by a Chechen. Putin, it seems, created a network of Chechen henchmen who do his dirty work. Given Viktor Orbán’s itchy palms and CÖF’s talk about civil war, the appearance of Hungary’s own Chechen is worrisome.

I assume that nobody is shocked after everything that has happened recently that the attitude of Hungarians toward Russia has undergone a dramatic shift. To the question “In your opinion, whom does the current foreign policy of the government serve first and foremost?” the percentage of those who named Russia tripled (from 9% to 26%) between November 2016 and April 2017 while the percentage of those who answered that the Orbán government’s foreign policy primarily serves the interests of the homeland has shrunk from 57% to 45%. But more about this fascinating poll tomorrow.

April 23, 2017