Viktor Orbán’s victory in Hungary adds to the darkness engulfing Europe

Pro-Putin nationalist managed to turn the war in Ukraine to his advantage in a win that deepens the EU’s troubles

'It is a bitter irony that, just as we learn of some of the worst atrocities in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war of terror against Ukraine, Putin’s closest ally among EU leaders, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, is re-elected partly because he turned that very war to his own political benefit.'

As I stood in a cold, disconsolate crowd in central Budapest late on Sunday night, listening to Hungarian opposition leader Péter Márki-Zay concede defeat in the country’s election, the Twitter feed on my phone filled with images of murdered Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha. 

Some of them had their hands tied behind their backs. Beside one murdered woman lay a keychain with a pendant showing the yellow stars on blue background of the European flag. The Ukrainian horrors are clearly far worse than the Hungarian miseries, but the two are fatefully connected.