The recent parliamentary election in Hungary was nothing short of a political maelstrom, brewing a potent mix of fabricated party agendas and shadowy, almost Kremlin-like, influence campaigns. When the dust settled on Sunday’s polls, revealing a landmark outcome, it became clear that a thorough examination of the tactics employed to sway voters was absolutely necessary. Peter Magyar’s Tisza party emerged victorious, seizing a remarkable two-thirds majority with 138 seats out of 199, effectively ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year reign as prime minister. While international attention was largely fixed on external interference, particularly from Russia, experts revealed that the overwhelming majority of disinformation originated domestically, not in Moscow, painting a picture of an internal battle for truth and influence.
Szilárd Teczár, a sharp journalist from the Hungarian fact-checking organization Lakmusz, conservatively estimated that at least 90% of the disinformation was homegrown. When you factor in the sheer reach and impact of these messages, he believes that figure could even be higher. Within this domestic landscape, Orbán’s Fidesz party wasn’t just a dominant force; it was the orchestrator of an entire ecosystem designed to shape public perception. Teczár highlighted the party’s pervasive influence over media outlets and pointed to proxy organizations like the National Resistance Movement and Megafon, an “influencer network,” as two of the most critical players in this information war. As the election drew nearer, both online and offline, Euronews Next delved deeper into the prevailing narratives and the innovative, often unsettling, political messaging trends that emerged.
Disinformation researchers noted that pro-government actors in this election employed tactics far more aggressive and sophisticated than in previous campaigns. Konrad Bleyer-Simon, a research fellow at the European University Institute, revealed a particularly alarming new strategy: the creation of entirely fabricated news stories. He shared a striking example where Orbán’s party crafted a counterfeit party platform for Tisza and slyly leaked it to Index, a Hungarian news site. Index then published a story alleging that the opposition planned a significant tax hike if they won. The document was an elaborate forgery, even including ludicrous proposals like taxing cats and dogs. Tisza, understandably, launched multiple lawsuits against Index and other media outlets for disseminating this falsehood. Orbán’s party didn’t stop there; they subsequently plastered these fake policy platforms on campaign posters across the country. Bleyer-Simon explained, “What I think is different is that now the government is going beyond propaganda and is also creating its own facts on the ground. They tried to fabricate proof for their propaganda.” He suggested that Orbán’s camp resorted to such “extreme” methods because they were genuinely afraid of losing the elections—a fear that, in the end, became a reality with Magyar’s decisive victory. To counteract these smear tactics, the Tisza party adopted a grassroots strategy, going “village to village” to build support, a move Bleyer-Simon believes ultimately strengthened them against Orbán’s attempts to undermine their credibility.
While the shadowy hand of the Kremlin was indeed detected in the Hungarian campaign, disinformation analysts concluded that its reach was far more limited than initially feared. Alice Lee, an analyst with NewsGuard, characterized Russia’s involvement as a “classic playbook” of election interference, primarily involving the fabrication of news reports filled with “egregious claims” against Orbán’s opponents. One particularly cunning operation, dubbed Matryoshka, specialized in crafting fake video news reports. In Hungary, this group engineered a false video, purportedly from the French outlet Le Monde, baselessly accusing Ukrainian artist Denis Panshenko of poisoning Hungarian dogs, Lee recounted. Another Russian actor, Storm 1516, published more elaborate articles designed to mimic legitimate news sites. One of their major pieces falsely claimed that Orbán’s main opponent had insulted US President Donald Trump, a contentious accusation that gained significant traction on social media platform X. Storm-1516 also targeted other Tisza figures, leveling accusations that they were dragging Hungary into the Russia-Ukraine war and threatening to sour US-Hungarian relations. Lee offered a theory for this heightened Russian activity: “The Russians are interfering more now because they assumed that… Orbán would be pretty safe because he has a strong sort of state media monopoly… [and] a fairly good hold over the population.” However, much of this interference seemingly missed its mark. Lakmusz, the fact-checking organization, discovered that many of the Russian campaigns were published in English rather than Hungarian and predominantly on X, a platform Teczár noted is “not that important” for Hungarian political discourse compared to Facebook. He cautioned, “We should be careful not to overexaggerate the effect of… outright Russian disinformation pieces, because when we look at their reach and spread, we found that these were quite limited.”
New advertising restrictions imposed by tech giants Meta and Google forced Hungarian political parties to adapt their strategies for reaching voters on popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. These restrictions, which came into effect last October for Meta in the EU and last September for YouTube, aimed to prohibit political advertising that could influence election outcomes. Bleyer-Simon and Teczár agreed that these measures had some success in reducing overt propaganda on social media compared to previous campaigns. However, Fidesz, ever resourceful, found covert ways to circumvent these restrictions and broadcast its messages. They established private Facebook groups, such as “Fighters Club” with over 61,000 members and “Digital Civic Circles” boasting more than 100,000. The “Fighter’s Club,” for instance, described itself as founded by Viktor Orbán in 2025 to “effectively represent Hungary’s interests in the online space” and targeted invitation-only Hungarians who were “actively ready to act for God, homeland and family.” Teczár explained that Fidesz created these structures to “send their supporters to specific social media posts and instruct them to like, share, and comment to boost reach,” although he noted that engagement on these posts wasn’t exceptionally high. According to Political Capital, a leading Hungarian NGO, these Fidesz-backed groups collectively ran over 4,000 ads on Meta to recruit members. Other Facebook pages, like “Heart of Hungary,” which deceptively presented itself as an equestrian group, published five paid ads using a fabricated article accusing Tisza politician Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi of recruiting Hungarians to fight in Ukraine. These ads reached an alarming 100,000 people within a single week.
Adding another layer of complexity to the disinformation landscape, Political Capital also highlighted Fidesz’s use of AI-generated videos on Facebook for “negative campaigning, discrediting and social fear-mongering.” For example, Fidesz party candidate István Mohácsy posted a war-themed AI video that chillingly depicted the Tisza party sending young Hungarians to the war front, with other party members like Ruszin-Szendi, Tibor Ferenc Halmai, and Tamás Cseh shown in military uniforms. In a fascinating twist, Tisza members also leveraged AI to counter these pro-government narratives. Magyar and several Tisza politicians posted AI-generated TIME Magazine covers on Facebook, portraying themselves as “Person of the Year,” a move Political Capital interpreted as building the “myth of the man who defies power.” Bleyer-Simon concluded that these AI-generated videos and certain social media ads are not tracked by Meta Ad Library or similar tools previously available to researchers. This significant gap makes it considerably harder for analysts to monitor and analyze their spread, leaving an unsettling void in understanding the full scope of manipulative campaigning ahead of the election.