The Hungarian-Slovak operation to undermine Ukraine. An attempt to involve the Czechs

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After his visit to Moscow, R. Fico began to actively accuse Ukraine of trying to bring down his government. From the thesis that most of the protesters are Ukrainians to the fact that Ukrainian special services are involved in his downfall. At the same time, the prime minister did not provide any reliable information or statistics.

Fico's accusations intensified in January 2025, when Slovakia faced the largest cyberattack in its history against the Office of Geodesy, Cartography and Land Cadastre, which made it impossible to work with real estate, mortgages, land and other things for several weeks.

The Fico government accused Ukraine without evidence. Interestingly, the attack was carried out using a data encryption method that Moscow hackers had already used in 2023 to attack the National Bank of Slovakia, the National Council and the Ministry of Defence. And this attack took place almost immediately after a large delegation led by Fico's ally from the Danko coalition left Moscow. Fico used the attack on these Slovak registers to give a reasoned appearance to his own claims of a coup from the outside. With these statements, Prime Minister Fico is trying to explain the massive anti-government protests in Slovakia, dismissing the consequences of his own policies as a factor in Slovak discontent.

However, the meaning of all this is as follows: against the backdrop of mass protests and problems in the government, Fico tried to create an image of an aggressive external enemy —Ukraine and the EU — acting through ‘unprincipled Ukraine’.

Strangely enough, the theme that ‘Ukraine is interfering in the affairs of its neighbours’ was picked up almost simultaneously by Orban's government. First, the head of the Fidesz faction Kocsis accused Ukraine of launching a campaign to discredit Orban, and later, Tamas, the Communications Director of the Fidesz party, accused the Hungarian opposition of ‘taking money from Ukraine’ and ‘selling out to Ukrainians after the Americans cut off funding from USAID’.

An interesting coincidence, or maybe not. It is likely that such accusations are part of Orban's defence strategy. These accusations came just before the Hungarian prime minister was found to have an undeclared castle registered in his father's name worth €45 million (€15 million for the castle and €30 million for restoration). At the same time, Orban and his wife officially have only 14 thousand euros in savings.

Therefore, the topic of ‘external enemies in the form of Ukraine’ conveniently matched the Hungarian prime minister's need to defend himself against another corruption scandal.

The hidden goal of Orban and Fico's actions is to create an image of Ukraine as a country that is ‘no different from Moscow’. The next step is to equate the victim of aggression with the aggressor. Then, to argue for the need to weaken support for Ukraine.

All of this is part of a broader information campaign to equate the victim of aggression with the aggressor in order to ‘satisfy’ Moscow and weaken Ukraine's position, and on the other hand, to use it as a method of diverting attention from internal problems by creating an image of an external enemy in the form of Ukraine.

Another goal is to create a manufactured argument: not to tighten sanctions, not to stand up for Ukraine and to justify their (Hungarian and Slovak) blockades by saying that Ukraine is committing severe international violations against them.

Since Fico and Orban do not have a very positive image in Europe due to a series of scandals related to their ties with Moscow, they are both interested in finding an additional partner to strengthen their own narratives.

An attempt to engage the Czechs

It looks like Orban is planning to find a partner in his colleague in the European group, the opposition Czech politician Babiš. And this would be a rather natural decision after the attempt to normalise relations between the current Czech government and Orban failed completely and added new scandals and accusations to the piggy bank of Czech-Hungarian relations. That is why the Hungarian prime minister is ready to continue to conflict with the current Czech government, as he is betting on Babiš as the future winner of the Czech elections and the possibility of resetting relations afterwards.

As part of this, Foreign Minister Siyarto and a rather large delegation, according to Czech media reports, including representatives of various agencies, arrived for a closed meeting with Babiš. The meeting was supposed to be low-profile, but it was not.

The current Czech government accused the Hungarians of violating protocols by failing to warn them of the presence of a Hungarian high-ranking official in the country. The Czech Republic called these actions ‘disappointing events’.

Instead, it is known that there were meeting with Babiš's representatives for 3 days. First, there was an ‘unknown meeting’ with someone from Hungary. The second meeting was with Hungarian Foreign Minister Siyarto. The third was with individual representatives from the minister. Such mystery creates suspicion about the purpose of the meeting.

These moments may indicate a multi-stage attempt to reach some kind of solution: quickly ‘here and now’.

At this stage, we are more than convinced that this is an attempt by the Hungarian side to persuade Babiš to make accusations of Ukrainian interference in the elections an element of the election campaign. The rhetoric used is very similar to that of the pro-Moscow ‘Georgian Dream’ party during its own election campaign in Georgia, which had a certain effect.

The purpose of these actions by Orban, under the disguise of ‘concern for Babiš's future’, is to attract a ‘third party’ (not so prejudiced) to accuse Ukraine. Because of their image, Orban and Fico appear to be too prejudiced, and their accusations are perceived with bias.

Babiš, on the other hand, is a more ideal candidate, having been part of ALDE for a long time and starting his election campaign.

The logic is simple: find points of mutual benefit and use the accusations against Ukraine to your advantage.