ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝

authocratic

Just being pedantic, but you are mixing up two related words here:

• autocratic means “ruled by a single person, the autocrat”
• authoritarian means “holding obedience to authority above individual freedom”

I’ll be honest, I expected better from the Guardian.

I could write a small novel about important and relevant facts being omitted or pussyfooted around, but the main points are:

• Just a day before this story, there was a leak in the Hungarian military where a speech of the Minister of Defense was taped in 2023 that the then-recent purge - forced retirement - of military leaders was so that the military could be transformed from a “peace mentality” to a “war mentality” and that “we have to go Phase 0 of the path to war”.
• The spies were found to be collecting intelligence on specific questions, notably how “a Hungarian peacekeeping force occupying the Transcarpathia region would be received by the local civilian populace, the local law enforcement and the local military”.
• The Orbán government is not “neutral” with respect to Russia. They have been actively funding Russia from Hungarian taxpayer money by buying Russian gas over world market prices. They have said that the 1956 revolution in Hungary was “unwise”, implying there is no point in trying to defend against a Russian invasion. The Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs - guy with the big forehead enthusiastically called the Cockatiel in Hungary - received the Friendship medal, the highest non-military commendation in Russia just four years ago.
• The Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs claimed there was a plan together with Orbán, Putin and Kaczyński that would have had Hungarian and Polish peacekeepers occupy Western Ukraine after Russia claims the Eastern half.

I know the Guardian is trying to be non-sensationalist, but in the past few days, a literal decade happened in Hungarian politics.

I know you are not malicious, but conflating Hungary, the will of the Hungarian people and the actions of the Orbán government is the cornerstone of Orbán’s propaganda. Please don’t do it.

The actual Hungarian people overwhelmingly support Ukraine and its defense, and would like to see it as an EU member. When the Russian total offensive started in 2022, people in Hungary were getting in their cars, packing them full of groceries, and driving hundreds of kilometres to the Ukrainian border to help refugees, with exactly zero prompting or help or even acknowledgement from the government.

I barely know anything about the conflict, but this comment section is wild.

Isn’t that why JD Vance is there?