Five days before Hungarians vote in elections that could bring down Viktor Orbán after 16 years in office, US Vice-President JD Vance has intervened in the campaign to give the Hungarian prime minister a ringing endorsement, while delivering another blistering attack on the EU.
Standing beside Orbán, Vance said he was in Budapest “to help him in this campaign cycle” although he conceded the US would “work with whoever wins this election”.
Orbán’s main rival Péter Magyar is well ahead in most opinion polls.
The veteran prime minister is a key European ally of the Trump administration, as well as being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest partner in the EU.
After winning four elections in a row since 2010, Orbán faces the toughest challenge in a political career going back almost 40 years.
In a last-ditch bid to boost the prime minister before the 12 April vote, Vance and his wife Usha arrived in Budapest for the first top-level US visit to Hungary for 20 years. They were welcomed by Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, who said Orbán’s friendship with President Donald Trump had created a “new golden age” in relations.
Péter Magyar responded to the visit by saying his Tisza party welcomed Vance to Budapest, and that when his party came to office it would consider the US as a prominent partner, both as a Nato ally and as an economic partner.
Following talks with Orbán, Vance launched a bitter attack on the European Union and Ukraine.
He accused the EU of “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference that I have ever seen or ever even read about… because they hate this guy”.
Vance added that “part of the reason” for his visit was because “interference that’s come from the bureaucracy in Brussels has been truly disgraceful”.
Speaking later at an Orbán campaign rally, he said: “We want you to make a decision about your future with no outside forces pressuring you or telling you what to do. I’m not telling you exactly who to vote for but what I am telling you is that the bureaucrats in Brussels, those people should not be listened to.”
He ended his speech urging those present to “go to the polls in the weekend, stand with Viktor Orbán, because he stands for you”.
EU leaders have been frustrated for weeks that Orbán has slapped a veto on billions of euros of essential funding for Ukraine, even though he agreed to it last December. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke of “a gross act of disloyalty”.
However, they have carefully avoided getting caught up in the Hungarian election campaign.
Vance’s remarks were reminiscent of a speech he gave in Munich in February 2025, when he accused European leaders of placing restrictions on freedom of speech.
He also repeated unsubstantiated claims that Kyiv had become involved in the election campaign, without giving details, alleging “elements within the Ukrainian intelligence services [had] tried to put their thumb on the scale of American elections, on Hungarian elections. This is just what they do”.
Orbán has made hostility to Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a cornerstone of his campaign.
When the government of Serbia – Hungary’s neighbour to the south – announced that explosives had been found and neutralised near the TurkStream gas pipeline, close to the border with Hungary, Orbán and pro-government media labelled the incident a terror attack on Hungary’s energy supply. Ukraine swiftly declared it had nothing to do with the incident, suggesting it was a “Russian false-flag operation”.
Former intelligence sources in Hungary, and the opposition leader Péter Magyar, accused Orbán of staging the incident with the help of the Serbian President Alexander Vucic to boost his chances of re-election next Sunday.
Trump’s friendship with the Hungarian leader goes back to 2016, when Orbán was the first and only EU leader to support him in the US presidential election. He strongly backed Trump for re-election in 2024, and was in Washington last October to secure an exemption for Hungary from US sanctions on Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil.
Trump later made clear that the exemption was a personal deal between himself and Orbán – implying that if Orbán lost this election, his successor would have to re-apply.
On Tuesday, he spoke to those at Orbán’s campaign rally on speakerphone after Vance called him, describing the prime minister as “a fantastic man” and saying that the pair “have had a tremendous relationship”.
Hungary, almost alone among EU countries, has defied calls from Brussels to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels. In Washington, Orbán also committed to buying more US liquefied natural gas (LNG), as well as US nuclear technology and fuel. Hungary depends heavily on Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline from the east, and on Russian gas through the TurkStream pipeline from the south.
Both sources are now problematic. No oil has reached Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, which crosses Ukraine, since the end of January. Orbán blames Ukraine for failing to restore the pipeline after a Russian attack on oil infrastructure in western Ukraine on 27 January.
To prevent shortages, Hungary has been forced to release fuel reserves and import non-Russian oil through an alternative pipeline from Croatia.
