News Special: Are Ukrainian intelligence services involved in Hungarian election?

Spy scandals said to be “on the scale of Watergate” have hit the Hungarian election.

Start with TISZA, the opposition party, which claims that a government-hired agent codenamed “Henry” attempted to recruit two IT specialists working for their campaign.

When the operation appeared to have failed, their workplaces were searched for child pornography.

Meanwhile, the pro-government side is accusing Ukrainian intelligence of the case of Tamás Maróti, an IT specialist allegedly identified by Hungarian intelligence as a spy who was assigned to the Ukrainian embassy.

For many months, Maróti was said to have unrestricted access to the former headquarters of the TISZA Party. 

The Hungarian National Security Committee have insisted that the specialists – identified only by initials H.D. and M.T. — working for the TISZA Party were not in fact under surveillance by the Hungarian authorities during the ongoing campaign.

The story claiming they were being watched by Hungarian intelligence emerged from a Hungarian anti-Orbán news organisation Direkt36, which claims to be independent but was labelled in the past as “Soros funded” because of support from the Open Society.

Among those listed as present financial supporters of Direkt36 is Zinc Network London, which received money from the controversial Biden-administration USAID, now shut down by the US Department of Government Efficiency as “bloated, politicised and outdated”.

Their story concerned the year 2025, when, following an anonymous tip-off, the premises where the IT men worked were searched. Suspicious data storage devices and illegal military equipment were found. The police are currently investigating them on charges of manufacturing military equipment.

What is most interesting, however, is that during the investigation it emerged that the two IT experts working for the TISZA Party were also working for the Ukrainians and were in constant contact with the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest, which, according to Hungarian authorities, “poses a serious threat to national security”.

Previously, one of these individuals, identified by the initials M.T., had been prosecuted for the misuse of IT systems, computer fraud and extortion.

The second individual, H.D., established contact with representatives of the Ukrainian IT Army in Kyiv in 2023, and subsequently communicated with them via encrypted channels. He is alleged to have carried out operations on behalf of Ukraine.

Both H.D. and M.T. are alleged to have worked together to acquire spyware and specialised equipment for covert operations.

Furthermore, both IT specialists from the TISZA Party are said to have been under counter-intelligence surveillance for years due to contacts deemed suspicious by the Hungarian authorities.

As for the other “spy” story, according to information from a high-level source in TISZA, Tamás Maroti, accused of being a Ukrainian spy, did indeed head the party’s IT operations.

In a series of photographs published by conservative media dating from 2025 he can be seen in the company of campaign manager Péter Tóth. They are leaving a party summit attended by MEP Zoltán Tarr and Márk Radnai, the party’s vice-chairman.

According to a declassified intelligence report, Tamás Maroti holds dual British-Hungarian citizenship, operates under the name “Budda”. Questions were asked after allegations were made he tried to obtain classified intelligence tools and licensed dual-use items.

The report also states that he has recently visited Kyiv on several occasions and regularly visited the Ukrainian embassy in Budapest.

That source for several of the Hungarian “spy” stories appears to be Ukraine. It has engaged in political activity in Hungary, activity which has recently taken the form of overt support for the opposition party TISZA.

Let me make this clear: I am writing this as a Pole who wishes Ukraine victory and who, together with the Polish nation—united as never before—has been involved since February 24, 2022 in supporting its efforts and aiding refugees, and who has many Ukrainian friends.

But I also write as a journalist who saw how, in the 2023 Polish elections, Ukraine strongly backed Donald Tusk’s rise to power, and how, in one fell swoop, it abandoned this unity in Ukraine’s favour in order to get a Warsaw government more to the liking of the German and Brussels authorities.

This is the main line taken by the Ukrainian authorities: The overriding interest is accession to the European Union. Berlin will decide on this, so everything must be done as Germany wishes.

Poland, under the leadership of Conservative Jarosław Kaczyński’s camp, made a colossal effort to support Ukraine.

As soon as the war broke out, without waiting for any European or NATO decisions, while Europe hesitated, it supplied (to date) hundreds of items of military equipment, including 240 tanks, 82 artillery systems, 287 portable man-portable air defence missile systems, and approximately 70 million rounds of ammunition.

In the years that followed, these figures doubled. Oleksiy Arestovych, a former adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, put it plainly: At that time, Poland saved Ukraine.

This did not prevent Zelensky from engaging in a campaign against Jarosław Kaczyński, both openly and covertly.

It was effective because, in the end, it created the impression among conservative voters that Polish policy, which was fully committed to the Ukrainians, had been cynically exploited by Zelensky and the liberal camp.

This led to frustration and demobilisation within the conservative base.

To some extent, Zelensky’s decisions shaped the composition of Poland’s government. He gained a great deal: Poland’s opposition to opening the EU agricultural market to products from Ukraine disappeared.

However, a subsequent attempt of this kind was unsuccessful. Although during the 2025 presidential campaign Zelensky mocked candidate Karol Nawrocki and advised him “to start training in national defence”, the Poles decided otherwise. They elected a president who promised that the country “would not be Ukraine’s subsidiary”.

Is the same thing happening in Hungary today? A visit to any major city shows that attitudes towards the war and Ukraine are at the heart of this debate.

It can be seen on posters and heard on television programmes and online podcasts.

Budapest is also playing hardball to maintain supplies of Russian energy resources, which are crucial for the country’s economy.

In response to Ukraine’s blockade of oil supplies from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline, Prime Minister Orbán blocked electricity supplies to Ukraine and, above all, vetoed a €90 billion EU loan for Kyiv.

Espionage scandals illustrate just how tough a nut the Hungarians are dealing with. But their exposure may be proof that Orbán cannot be defeated using the method employed in Poland in 2023.

Kyiv officially welcomed the change of government in Warsaw at the time. And today we know that, together with Berlin, it has now coordinated a policy aimed at overthrowing Orbán’s government.

In this case, however, we know more details.

Facts have come out on the IT and campaign spheres for the opposition; we hear Zelensky’s threats against Orbán that his men will find him and have a word with him in their own way. Read: They will kill him.

Kyiv has felt the ambition to influence local affairs — and, listening to Zelensky, it does not shy away from more direct actions either.