Democracy Digest: Hungary’s Balancing Act Topples As It Abandons Russia ‘Spy Bank’

Upon his return to Budapest, Szijjarto welcomed another international pariah, this time in the form of Sergey Aleinik, the Belarusian foreign minister. Szijjarto justified the visit by arguing that "channels of communications need to be held open in order to achieve peace" and announced a high-level business forum to be held with Belarus sometime in the near future to strengthen economic cooperation. Szijjarto visited Minsk in February, drawing harsh criticism from European institutions, which have sanctioned the Belarusian regime of Aleksandr Lukashenko for rigging the 2020 presidential election and murdering and jailing protestors.

Yet the impossibility of this balancing act that the Kremlin-friendly government of Viktor Orban has been trying to maintain since Russia's invasion of Ukraine finally collapsed on Thursday when the Hungarian Ministry of Economic Development said that due to US sanctions imposed this week on the Budapest-based IIB - derided by critics as a 'Russian spy bank' - "the Government is recalling the persons delegated by the Hungarian State for offices held in the International Investment Bank and is resigning from the international financial institution." Yes, Hungary, following the lead of Czechia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, is leaving the very institution it controversially gave a home to. The announcement was part of a verbal war between the US and Hungary that also involved the US embassy in Hungary rolling out a billboard campaign declaring "Russians go home". The slogan is pointedly identical to that used in 1989 by the Hungarian democratic opposition (which included a young, ambitious Viktor Orban) to force Soviet troops to leave Hungary. The billboards also discredited the government's empty peace propaganda over Russia's...