Three years past retirement age, Imre still works every day. Soaring inflation in Hungary has made a pittance of his 120,000 forint-a-month ($370) pension.

But on April 12 the former bookseller will vote to reelect Viktor Orban anyway. He fears the opposition will send his son to the front in Ukraine.

“And because the Ukrainians hate Hungarians, they’ll send him to the most dangerous part. He won’t stand a chance,” Imre, 68, said behind the wheel of the Budapest taxi he drives to top up his income.

The Hungarian opposition has no intention of sending troops to fight in Ukraine. But that’s not the narrative being deployed by Orban’s Fidesz party. They are telling voters that in the event of the Hungarian prime minister being unseated after 16 years in power, Ukraine’s wartime leadership will first spend their money and then recruit their sons.

Orban, a right-wing nationalist who has for years consolidated power and maintained close links with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, is facing the most serious challenge yet in his long premiership. Independent polls give the Tisza party led by former Fidesz insider Peter Magyar double-digit leads ahead of the parliamentary vote.

Orban’s campaign, which has made attacks on Kyiv’s wartime leadership a centerpiece, is dialing up the anti-Ukraine message. In addition to his long record of seeking to stymie European Union assistance to Kyiv and recent accusations that Ukraine is blocking fuel shipments from Russia, a new campaign has tested boundaries of Orban’s rhetoric.

It was typified this week by an AI-generated video on Fidesz’s Facebook page, featuring a tearful girl asking when her father will come home. The sequence cuts to a man kneeling blindfolded on a patch of mud, who is then executed by a trench-coat-clad officer.

“War takes from everyone,” a caption reads. “Don’t risk it. Fidesz is the safe choice.” A crumpled photograph of the daughter sinks into the mud.

The video prompted an immediate outcry, with Magyar calling it “soulless manipulation” that crossed a red line. “Anyone resorting to such methods isn’t serving the nation but is trying to ruin it,” the opposition leader wrote on Facebook.

Hired muscle

Magyar’s pitch has gained traction. Orban’s popularity has eroded in recent years after Hungary was hit by a bout of inflation that peaked at more than 25% three years ago combined with stalled economic growth.

The Hungarian leader’s reelection playbook has been to project authority by pledging to keep citizens safe from a changing cast of external threats. In 2018, Fidesz promised to keep Middle Eastern migrants out of the country; in 2022 it was about keeping Hungary out of Putin’s war.

Now the focus is squarely on Ukraine. Tensions between Budapest and Kyiv have flared in recent weeks after a Russian attack struck the Druzhba pipeline on Jan. 27, halting flows of Russian oil to Hungary.

Budapest has refrained from calling out Moscow for damaging the pipeline, which passes through Ukraine. Instead, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Kyiv was dragging out repairs for political reasons, which his Ukrainian counterpart denied.

Hungary has also stepped up efforts to obstruct EU support to Kyiv, according to people familiar with the matter. On Friday, Budapest delayed approval for a budget measure needed to implement the 90 billion euro ($106 billion) loan for Ukraine, the people said.

With less than 60 days before the vote, Fidesz has refloated the anti-war messaging, casting Tisza as a tool of warmongering decision-makers in Kyiv and Brussels. The imagery, which dovetails with Kremlin talking points, is being blared from billboards and smartphone screens across the country.

Another billboard image features Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holding an expectant hand out for cash. He’s flanked by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Manfred Weber, leader of the European Parliament’s conservative group. The latter two, both Germans, are cast as hired muscle.

Throughout the day, state television carries a flashing reminder to sign a petition against sending money to Ukraine. News websites drive home the message with insistent pop-up screens.

The information campaign is only one element in an eventful campaign. President Donald Trump has strongly endorsed Orban, while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Budapest on Monday. Last week, Magyar sought to preempt the release of a tape of him having sex with his former partner, calling it a “Russia-style” blackmail attempt.

But polls have changed little since the start of the year, suggesting the campaign may struggle to counterbalance the impact of voter disillusionment at the poor state of public services.

Some 23% of Hungarians believed the country would enter the war if Tisza wins, while 54% said it wouldn’t, according to a survey taken in late January published on Feb. 19 by the 21 Kutatokozpont agency.

Either way, the campaign’s war imagery stokes memories in an Eastern European nation that saw its share of 20th-century violence. Hungarian schoolchildren learn about the devastation suffered by the military at the hands of the Red Army in World War II, when forces were sent deep into the Soviet Union on behalf of Nazi Germany.

Orban made use of those sensibilities in a speech last weekend.

“We Hungarians know what a war over there is like,” he said. “Hungarian boys died for foreign goals at the Don River, following foreign orders on foreign land. Once was enough.”

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(With assistance from Alberto Nardelli and Daryna Krasnolutska.)

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