While the Hungarian government officially supports Ukraine in line with the common EU and NATO position, a large part of the governing Fidesz party’s media machine has openly spread pro-Moscow propaganda, following the Russian occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk and the attack against Ukraine proper. Several media channels associated with Viktor Orbán’s government publicized fake news portraying Ukraine as the aggressor, and there have even been calls for Hungary to take part in a partition of Ukraine.
It was really Ukraine and the West that attacked Russia; Ukrainian soldiers have massacred civilians in eastern Ukraine; there is no such thing the Ukrainian nation – such and similar messages have appeared not only in Russian state propaganda, but also on channels supporting Viktor Orbán’s government, some of them funded by the Hungarian state. While politicians of the ruling Fidesz party have been very diplomatic when commenting the Russia-Ukraine conflict, several tools of the Fidesz media machine are spreading a contradicting message.
[…] a homebrewed fantasy also emerged: that Putin will return Transcarpathia to Hungary.
[…] the whole of Donetsk and Luhansk are officially recognized by Hungary as parts of Ukraine. In the state TV however, they referred to the regions as “areas between Russia and Ukraine”.
[…] Even stronger pro-Russian statements were made in Pesti TV, a private TV station that receives funding from the Hungarian government. Here, a guest who presented himself as an expert on Ukraine (he is actually a photographer and military engineer), said that there is no such thing as Ukrainian people and culture, and that Ukrainian is just a dialect of Russian. […] One publicist of the same site also openly called for the dissolution of the Ukrainian state.
[…] A central node of this network is a Facebook page called “Numbers – the antidote to left-wing fake news”, which commented on Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine thusly: “Russia recognizes the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic! Respect and gratitude! […] Another page named “Patriotic Europe Movement” published memes reinforces the Kremlin narrative that NATO (i.e. Hungary’s military allies) is the real aggressors against Russia. In another post, they wrote that “Ukraine is being held captive by the banking elite” and that the current crisis is the result of “US provocation”. This page, which has 210,000 followers, is noteworthy not just because it spread Russian propaganda in the past too, but also because it did so using Hungarian government funds.
Dear Poles, please don’t forget this when PiS defends Fidesz in the EU affairs.
>A central node of this network is a Facebook page called “Numbers – the antidote to left-wing fake news”
This is the one: fb dot com / szamokadatok
Is it brigading if I say that anyone reading this comment should go and report this trash to facebook? Maybe if we all report it we can finally get rid of it.
Well, the language barrier was always great to isolate the bullshit, the lies and the two faceness of the Putin lapdog called orbán. He has created two separate universes for the people inside the country and outside the country, which is easy, if someone has both the Eu’s and Putin’s money.
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Excerpts from the article:
While the Hungarian government officially supports Ukraine in line with the common EU and NATO position, a large part of the governing Fidesz party’s media machine has openly spread pro-Moscow propaganda, following the Russian occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk and the attack against Ukraine proper. Several media channels associated with Viktor Orbán’s government publicized fake news portraying Ukraine as the aggressor, and there have even been calls for Hungary to take part in a partition of Ukraine.
It was really Ukraine and the West that attacked Russia; Ukrainian soldiers have massacred civilians in eastern Ukraine; there is no such thing the Ukrainian nation – such and similar messages have appeared not only in Russian state propaganda, but also on channels supporting Viktor Orbán’s government, some of them funded by the Hungarian state. While politicians of the ruling Fidesz party have been very diplomatic when commenting the Russia-Ukraine conflict, several tools of the Fidesz media machine are spreading a contradicting message.
[…] a homebrewed fantasy also emerged: that Putin will return Transcarpathia to Hungary.
[…] the whole of Donetsk and Luhansk are officially recognized by Hungary as parts of Ukraine. In the state TV however, they referred to the regions as “areas between Russia and Ukraine”.
[…] Even stronger pro-Russian statements were made in Pesti TV, a private TV station that receives funding from the Hungarian government. Here, a guest who presented himself as an expert on Ukraine (he is actually a photographer and military engineer), said that there is no such thing as Ukrainian people and culture, and that Ukrainian is just a dialect of Russian. […] One publicist of the same site also openly called for the dissolution of the Ukrainian state.
[…] A central node of this network is a Facebook page called “Numbers – the antidote to left-wing fake news”, which commented on Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine thusly: “Russia recognizes the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic! Respect and gratitude! […] Another page named “Patriotic Europe Movement” published memes reinforces the Kremlin narrative that NATO (i.e. Hungary’s military allies) is the real aggressors against Russia. In another post, they wrote that “Ukraine is being held captive by the banking elite” and that the current crisis is the result of “US provocation”. This page, which has 210,000 followers, is noteworthy not just because it spread Russian propaganda in the past too, but also because it did so using Hungarian government funds.
Dear Poles, please don’t forget this when PiS defends Fidesz in the EU affairs.
>A central node of this network is a Facebook page called “Numbers – the antidote to left-wing fake news”
This is the one: fb dot com / szamokadatok
Is it brigading if I say that anyone reading this comment should go and report this trash to facebook? Maybe if we all report it we can finally get rid of it.
Well, the language barrier was always great to isolate the bullshit, the lies and the two faceness of the Putin lapdog called orbán. He has created two separate universes for the people inside the country and outside the country, which is easy, if someone has both the Eu’s and Putin’s money.