Hungary's Orbán claims the EU seeks to topple his government as his hostility toward it grows

BUDAPEST, Hungary — (AP) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed in a speech on Wednesday that the European Union seeks to topple his government and install a puppet regime in the Central European country, an escalation of open hostility toward the bloc by the member considered to have the warmest ties with Russia.

Speaking before thousands of supporters in Budapest, Orbán was marking Hungary’s national holiday commemorating a 1956 armed uprising against Soviet repression that began in the capital and spread across the country before being crushed by the Red Army.

Orbán has often used the holiday, which looms large in Hungarians' memory as a freedom fight against foreign domination, to draw parallels between past occupying forces like the Soviet Union and Ottoman Empire and the EU of today.

“Independent Hungarian politics are unacceptable to Brussels,” Orbán told the crowd, referring to the EU headquarters in Belgium. “That is why they announced in Brussels that they will get rid of Hungary’s national government. They also announced that they wanted to hang a Brussels puppet government around the country’s neck.”

Orbán gave no evidence to support his claims. There was no immediate public reaction from the EU.

“Do we bow to foreign will, this time to the will of Brussels, or do we resist it?” Orbán continued. “I propose that our answer be as clear and unambiguous as it was in 1956.”

The EU has withheld billions in financial support from Hungary over its alleged breaches of rule of law, while some of the bloc's lawmakers have repeatedly proposed stripping Hungary of its voting rights over democratic backsliding. The EU parliament declared in 2022 that Hungary can no longer be considered a democracy.

Hungary's leader has clashed with the bloc especially over the war in Ukraine. Hungary has routinely blocked, delayed or watered down EU efforts to extend assistance to Ukraine and sanction Russia, and taken an adversarial posture toward Kyiv while growing closer to Moscow.

Orbán has broken with other EU leaders by arguing for an immediate cease-fire and peace talks in Ukraine, leading critics to suggest that he is advocating for Russian interests and turning his back on his EU and NATO partners.

“The Brussels bureaucrats have led the West into a hopeless war,” said Orbán, who is widely seen as having the closest relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin of any EU leader. “In their minds, dizzy with the hope of victory, this war is the war of the West against Russia ... Now they want to openly push the entire European Union into the war in Ukraine.”

He claimed, without providing evidence, that the EU plans to allow Ukrainian soldiers to station in Hungary after a future victory "to guarantee the security of the whole of Europe.”

He added: “We Hungarians would wake up one morning to find that Slavic soldiers from the east were again stationed on the territory of Hungary. We do not want that, but the pressure from Brussels is getting stronger every day.”

Orbán's speech came at a particularly difficult time for his right-wing populist government, which has gone through a dip in support amid a sputtering economy, a series of scandals and the emergence of a popular new opposition challenger, Péter Magyar and his Tisza party. Recent polls show that Orbán's Fidesz party is neck and neck with Tisza with national elections on the horizon in 2026.

Later on Wednesday, Magyar led thousands of his supporters on a march between symbolic sites from the 1956 revolution in central Budapest.

Judit Fábián, a demonstrator who traveled around 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the city of Győr, said she came to honor those heroes who fought for Hungary's freedom 68 years ago, a fight she said has parallels in Hungary today.

“We want freedom, we want to get our country back, to get our symbols back, to express opinions freely, to live freely, to live in democracy. That is the most important thing,” she said.

Another marcher, Tamás Csipes from Budapest, said that after nearly 15 years with Orbán and his party in power, it was time for Hungary to take a different path.

“There should be some change in this country,” he said. “I was a Fidesz voter for a very long time, but eight or 10 years ago I realized that this is not the Fidesz that it was before.”

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.