As early as 2019, Lithuania called for Hungary to be suspended from NATO meetings due to suspicions of leaking data to Russia
On March 24, 2026, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that Hungarian officials have long been suspected of passing on classified information from closed-door EU and NATO meetings to Moscow.
Reuters reports this.
According to him, as far back as 2019, Lithuania officially requested that the Hungarian delegation be excluded from Alliance meetings due to the threat of leaks of top-secret information. Tusk emphasized that information about Budapest’s possible cooperation with Russian intelligence had been coming from various sources for many years.
Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis confirmed that other NATO member states share similar concerns. He noted that during preparations for the 2023 Vilnius summit, efforts were made to exclude Hungarian representatives from discussions on the most sensitive security issues. These statements came amid reports that Russian political strategists were operating in Hungary to support the current government in the elections, acting on orders from the Russian leadership.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called the possible wiretapping of Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó an attack on the country and ordered an immediate investigation into the matter. The scandal erupted after the pro-government media outlet Mandiner published an audio recording of a conversation between an investigative journalist and a source in the Foreign Ministry. According to the publication, Szijjártó’s phone number was allegedly passed on to foreign intelligence services to monitor the minister.
The Hungarian opposition also promises to investigate Szijjártó’s ties to Russia.
