Why is Viktor Orban Vladimir Putin’s Greatest Ally in the Middle of Europe?
Let’s consider how Russia could restart history at the heart of Europe
In the Western corporate media, you often hear about how terrible Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban are. You hear that they are basically dictators who love oppressing people in their countries and taking power away from their political opponents. You hear that they just want to prevent progress in their countries and cut their people off from the outside world. You hear that they are singularly focused on the pursuit of power without any thought for serving their fellow countrymen. You hear that they just want to threaten people and bully them. But let’s see what else may lie behind their mutual political affinity.
An oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, behind bars in Russia. Could you imagine a Western oligarch experiencing the same treatment?
They both want to keep foreign money and power out of politics. You will often hear that liberals and progressives want to keep money out of politics, as they know how corrupt effective bribes can be to the political system. They know how much influence money can produce in the lines of the creation of propaganda in the media, indoctrination in the schools, and the financing of political movements. But look at what they say when Western elites inject their own institutions into Hungary and Russia. Do they say that the elites they accuse at home are equally guilty abroad in Russia and Hungary? No, they demand that Orban and Putin allow these elites free influence in those non-Western countries. “Civil society” organizations and NGOs are the projects of elite Western donors who have their own political and financial interests. The hypocrisy would be staggering if I wasn’t already tired of Western liberal hypocrisy. Thus both Orban and Putin are aligned by their rejection of Western elite influence over their countries.
George Soros, an oligarch supported by the West whose influence Viktor Orban has cut off in Hungary.
Another way that Putin may gain from his partnership with Orban is that while Putin is asserting the rights of Russians in Ukraine, Orban is also asserting the rights of Hungarians in Ukraine. Both Russian and Hungarian populations in Ukraine are subject to language restrictions in education and business, and the government in Kyiv is seeking to replace their languages with Ukrainian. Thus both Russian and Hungarian cultures would be decimated by policies implemented by the regime under Zelensky.
Not only culture is at stake, but both Putin and Orban are questioning the boundaries imposed upon them by Western powers. Orban considers the Treaty of Triano, which took away two thirds of Hungarian territory and one third of the Hungarian population, as a national disaster and erected a monument mourning the tragedy. Hungary still has a couple million people directly outside Western-recognized Hungarian borders, over a hundred thousand of them located in territory given to Kyiv. Orban considers all of them eligible for citizenship, and many already take part in Hungarian elections.
Hungarian territory in brown at the far west of Ukraine.
Putin also questions the borders Western elites imposed upon the former Russian Empire and former Soviet Bloc. Knowing history, he understands that Ukraine is a creation of Lenin, and he seems determined not to let Westerners dominate any territory gained and developed by Catherine the Great and subsequent Russian leaders. He will not give up Novorussia now that it has been restored to Russian control, and he will not let Westerners dictate terms. He also undoubtedly knows that Orban is also frustrated by the historical contingencies imposed upon Hungary.
Territory settled by Catherine the Great and subsequent Russian leaders, going back hundreds of years.
What could Putin do about such historical contingencies? He could offer to solve some of them by liberating Transcarpathia and giving the Hungarian areas back to Hungary. This would undoubtedly whet the appetite of Orban and incite discussion among the European elites about the risks of more territorial exchanges between European states. Nationalism would be a haunting specter on the European stage once more, and Putin would be able to seize upon this reality to deal with countries on a more individual basis. Europe would be free of the political boundaries imposed by the West after World War II and the Cold War. History would begin again. Indeed, in Ukraine, it already has.