Viktor Orbán

Disinformation and misinformation being spread about Ukrainian refugees includes exaggerating the financial support they can access - a claim widespread in Czechia - and incorrect claims of antisocial or illegal activity.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban commented on the national radio station Kossuth Rádió on Friday about the current situation and the consequences of Western sanctions against Moscow, saying that his previous assumptions about their effect have now been confirmed, as the sanctions policy has not lived up to the European Union's initial hopes.

Under the umbrella of the state of emergency, the government has passed a set of decisions and laws, including a ban on energy exports and an increase in production at Hungary's only nuclear power plant.

Massive rallies against an unpopular tax reform have continued in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, where several thousand protesters gathered near the parliament building on Wednesday afternoon, many of them independent entrepreneurs affected by the changes.

It took only 24 hours for the Hungarian government to pass a bill that makes a simplified tax regime ineligible for hundreds of thousands of people.

The Small Taxpayers' Itemised Tax, KATA, was the most popular choice for almost 400,000 small businesses and self-employed, due to its simple administration and low tax rate.

The Hungarian government's attempt to scrap a concert to raise funds for Ukraine was foiled by an independent mayor, local media reported on Sunday.

European Union leaders have backed an embargo on "more than two-thirds" of Russian oil imports, European Council President Charles Michel was quoted as saying on Twitter.

During the ongoing summit in Brussels, Michel also commented that the maximum pressure on Russia will end the war, and the oil embargo cuts a huge source of funding for the military machine.

Grotesque, crude and clearly insulting, the puppets are designed to grab attention and burst despotic bubbles. Meanwhile, Central European populists serving Moscow and Beijing's interests, like Czech President Milos Zeman and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, metamorphosise into giant slugs eating the lettuce leaf of democracy.

The Hungarian government will be given extraordinary powers to respond more quickly to the challenges posed by the war in Ukraine. This was explained by Prime Minister Viktor Orban three months after Russia invaded his country's northeastern neighbor.

"We can never give up on the Hungarians living there and our abducted territories," he tells BIRN, advocating a stealthy approach, "just gently, carefully, diplomatically, step by step", for a revanchist policy that would, if put in practice, represent a major geopolitical shock in Eastern Europe.