VSquare reports:

Moscow has dispatched a team to Budapest to interfere in Hungary’s April 2026 parliamentary elections, VSquare has learned from multiple European national security sources. The operation, overseen by Putin confidant Sergei Kiriyenko, is designed to keep Viktor Orbán in power — and follows the same blueprint Russia used in Moldova.

The Kremlin has tasked a team of political technologists with interfering in Hungary’s April 2026 parliamentary elections, VSquare has learned from multiple European national security sources . The goal is to help Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government secure another electoral victory.

The operation is said to be overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff and the principal architect of Russia’s political influence infrastructure at home and abroad. A former head of the state nuclear corporation Rosatom, Kiriyenko was appointed Putin’s domestic policy chief in 2016 and has since significantly expanded his portfolio to encompass foreign electoral interference. His most recent and most aggressive deployment was in Moldova, where operatives under his direction ran vote-buying networks, troll farms, and on-the-ground influence campaigns aimed at undermining pro-European President Maia Sandu.

The operation produced mixed results, but according to sources familiar with the intelligence, the same playbook is now being applied to Hungary. National security sources from three different European countries said the intelligence has been shared with allied services, and that many EU and NATO agencies are already aware of the effort. The United States has also shared sensitive intelligence on the matter in February. [Continue reading…]