JD Vance due in Hungary to back Orban's re-election bid

4 hours agoNick ThorpeBudapestEPAVance's visit is the latest show of White House support for OrbanUS Vice-President JD Vance is due in Hungary to back veteran Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a key European ally of the Trump administration, in a tough parliamentary election.Vance is expected to address an election rally with Orban in a football stadium in Budapest on Tuesday afternoon. Last month, US President Donald Trump said Orban had his "complete and total support" in a video message to the Hungarian Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest.The 12 April election is billed as Orban's toughest challenge in a political career going back almost 40 years. On Sunday he faces Peter Magyar, a former insider in Orban's party Fidesz, who broke with him two years ago to found the centre-right Tisza Party. Tisza leads Fidesz by between 10% and 20% in most polls. Only the strongly pro-government Nezopont agency puts Fidesz narrowly ahead.Orban's friendship with Trump goes back to 2016, when he was the first and only EU leader to back Trump in the US presidential election. That friendship has flourished since then. Orban 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 Orban - implying that if Orban loses this election, his successor would have to re-apply.Hungary, almost alone among EU countries, has defied calls from Brussels to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels. In Washington, Orban 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. Orban blames Ukraine for failing to restore the pipeline, after a Russian attack on oil infrastructure in western Ukraine on 27 January. ReutersThe election is billed as Orban's toughest challenge in decades of politicsInterestingly, there has been no visible diplomatic support for the Hungarian government from the Trump administration on the pipeline issue. To prevent shortages, Hungary has been forced to release fuel reserves and import non-Russian oil through an alternative pipeline from Croatia.A new problem emerged on Sunday, when the Serbian government - 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. Orban and pro-government media labelled the incident a terror attack on Hungary's energy supply. But former intelligence sources in Hungary, and the opposition leader Peter Magyar, accused Orban of staging the incident with the help of the Serbian President Alexander Vucic to boost his chances of re-election next Sunday.Orban has made hostility to Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a cornerstone of his election campaign.Other recent scandals also appear to have dented his popularity. Private telephone conversations between Peter Szijjarto, the Hungarian foreign minister, and top Russian officials over several years have been leaked. Transcripts suggest that Szijjarto regularly keeps the Russian government informed about confidential discussions at European Union summits, and lobbied to get Russian officials off the sanctions list at Moscow's bidding. Szijjarto has defended the calls as "normal diplomacy".Orban is hoping that Vance's visit will impress undecided Hungarian voters enough to back him once again, as a strong and internationally respected leader, in turbulent times.