Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has long cast the war in Ukraine as an existential threat to his country, portraying Hungary as an innocent bystander in a conflict not of its making. “We Hungarians are the only ones, apart from the Ukrainians, who are dying in that war,” he declared in 2022. In Orban’s telling, Hungary belongs to the “peace camp,” while Ukraine, Brussels, Washington, D.C., and Moscow form the “war party.”

The framing resonates. Hungary’s memory of the 1956 uprising, when Soviet troops crushed dissent, leaving 2,500 people dead and 20,000 wounded, remains a national trauma. Invoking images of Hungarian sons returning in coffins, Orban has turned fear of war into political capital.