A leaked audio from a major international investigation published on Tuesday (31 March) reveals Hungarian foreign minister Péter Szijjártó discussing the removal of Russian oligarchs from EU sanctions with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
In the call, Szijjártó also pledged to secure Slovakian support for the effort.
Slovak foreign minister Juraj Blanár has yet to explain why prime minister Robert Fico wanted to secure the lifting of sanctions for two Russian oligarchs — Mikhail Fridman and Alisher Usmanov — who were placed under the sanctions list almost immediately after Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2022.
Fico, supported by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, this month blocked the rollover of the sanctions against Russia until the very last moment, in a bid to delist these two oligarchs.
Usmanov has been active in trying to be removed from the list. He was also bothered by the fact that the EU blacklist included two of his sisters, who owned some parts of the assets attributed to him.
It has now emerged that pressure to remove at least one of the sisters was also exerted by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in a phone call with Hungarian foreign minister Szijjártó.
The Hungarian foreign minister promised his Russian colleague that he would work on getting the Slovak government to help as well.
‘Did I say something wrong?’
These revelations come from a new investigation by several media outlets and the Ján Kuciak Investigative Centre (ICJK), which, among other things, published a recording of Szijjártó communicating with Lavrov, a politician on the EU sanctions list.
The audio recording shows how Lavrov instructed the Hungarian politician, assigned him tasks and clearly had the upper hand.
When Lavrov told Szijjártó that his visit to Russia had received coverage in Russian media, the Hungarian minister asked him: “Did I say something wrong?” Lavrov then asked him to help Russia get sanctions lifted.
On top of that, the ICJK also published the full text of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s letter to prime minister Fico.
The investigation is a continuation of one of the biggest scandals of Hungary’s climaxing election campaign, according to which Szijjártó leaked strategic information from EU negotiations directly to the Russian foreign minister.
“Evidence has now emerged that the Hungarian foreign minister acted in the interests of the Kremlin and tried to secure the lifting of sanctions against Russian oligarchs, including the sister of Alisher Usmanov,” the ICJK wrote.
Both of Usmanov’s sisters have already been gradually removed from the EU sanctions lists, in part following pressure from Hungary.
‘The right thing to do’
When Slovak foreign minister Juraj Blanár was asked on national TV about lobbying in favour of Usmanov, he was unable to answer and reacted irritably.
He also did not say whether this situation was eventually explained to interior minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok, who belongs to a different party and had complained that he did not understand the lobbying for Russian oligarchs.
Fico’s government has tried several times to get Usmanov off the sanctions list.
Last year Fico talked about how wrong it was that Usmanov’s sister had also ended up on the sanctions lists. This happened roughly nine months after the Hungarian foreign minister had promised Lavrov that she would be removed.
At that time, Fico defended Usmanov and described the removal of his sister from the list as the right thing to do, arguing that the list had to be gradually eased.
“It is a matter of a few weeks or months before the whole list, all 2,400 names, falls,” the Slovak prime minister said last year.
It thus appears that the Slovak prime minister had been acting in the interests of the Russian oligarch over a long period, in coordination with the Hungarian foreign minister, and that they were allegedly working on trying to soften European sanctions against Russia.
The EU still refuses to remove Usmanov from the list – and he was not struck off the sanctions list even this March, when Fico tried again to achieve this.
According to Denník N’s sources, the billionaire is trying to get off the EU sanctions list so he can resume his business activities and, for example, again head the International Fencing Federation. In addition, these sources say he is an important figure for the Kremlin.
Usmanov threatens media that write critically about him with lawsuits. Such threats were also sent by his lawyer to Denník N. He has sued several European and US media outlets, mainly over their linking him to Vladimir Putin or over information about his assets.
Calling at Alisher’s request
The investigation published on Tuesday reveals that just an hour after Hungary’s Szijjártó arrived in Budapest from St Petersburg on 30 August 2024, he received a call from Lavrov.
The reason for the call was a request: Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov was trying to get his sister Gulbahor Ismailova removed from the European Union’s sanctions lists.
“I am calling at Alisher’s request, he asked me to remind you to do something regarding his sister,” Lavrov said to the Hungarian minister, according to ICJK.
Szijjártó promised he would help him.
“Yes, of course,” Szijjártó replied. “The situation is that together with the Slovaks we are submitting to the European Union a proposal for her removal from the list. We will submit it next week and, as a new review period is beginning, it will be put on the agenda and we will do everything we can to get her off this list.”
Lavrov was pleased and thanked Szijjártó for his recognition and for his “support and fight for equality in all areas”.
Recording of the Lavrov–Szijjártó conversation (source – ICJK)
Budapest managed to secure the removal of Usmanov’s sister from the sanctions package in March 2025. In addition to her, the Hungarians requested the delisting of another eight names.
Already in 2022, Brussels removed Usmanov’s sister Saodat Narzieva from the list.
April 2022 – The oligarch Alisher Usmanov’s sister Gulbahor Ismailova was placed on the EU sanctions list for allegedly owning the superyacht Dilbar via trusts.
August 2024 – “I am calling at Alisher’s request, and he asked me to remind you to do something regarding his sister,” Lavrov told the Hungarian foreign minister, who promised to help him with the assistance of the Slovak government.
March 2025 – Ismailova was removed from the list as a compromise with Hungary in order to unblock the extension of sanctions. Fico also came out in favour of removing Usmanov and his sister.
March 2026 – Erdogan wrote a letter to Fico asking him to support the lifting of sanctions against Usmanov. Fico subsequently again spoke in the EU in favour of removing Usmanov from sanctions and threatened to block them. In the end he backed down and withdrew his veto to avoid becoming completely isolated in Brussels.
Always at Russian disposal
According to the investigation, the two diplomats went on in their conversation with disparaging remarks about the European Union and especially about countries that support Ukraine.
The Hungarian foreign minister also talked about Gazprom’s new headquarters, which he had visited in Russia, and ended by telling Lavrov: “I am always at your disposal.”
Transcripts and audio recordings of the phone calls between Lavrov and Szijjártó were obtained and verified by a consortium of investigative media made up of ICJK, VSquare, FRONTSTORY.PL, Delfi Estonia and The Insider. The authenticity of the recording was also confirmed by the Witness Rapid Response Team.
“This communication (one of several from the period 2023 to 2025) points to exceptionally friendly relations between Szijjártó, who represents an EU and a Nato member state, and Lavrov, who represents a state that attacked and occupies a European country and is waging a hybrid war that includes arson attacks and sabotage against countries on Nato’s eastern flank,” the investigative journalists wrote, adding that, in their view, the Hungarian foreign minister came across as almost servile towards Lavrov.
“If you removed the names from these conversations and showed them to any operations officer, they would swear it was a transcript of a conversation between an intelligence officer and their source,” said one high-ranking, unnamed European intelligence officer after studying the transcript of the calls.
Meanwhile, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan asked in a letter for help in getting oligarch Alisher Usmanov removed from EU sanctions.
“At the same time, third countries nationals subject to these sanctions may face certain difficulties in their relations with our country. The most important example in this regard are the EU’s sanctions against the Uzbek philanthropist and businessman Alisher Usmanov and his family,” Erdogan wrote, arguing that the billionaire is a philanthropist and businessman whom, in his view, the EU is not treating fairly.
‘Standard communication’
The Hungarian foreign minister described his conduct as completely standard.
“It has been known for quite some time that foreign intelligence services — with the participation of active Hungarian journalists — have been wiretapping my phone conversations. Today the listeners made another huge ‘discovery’: they have proved that in public I say the same things as on the phone… Good job!” Szijjártó wrote on Facebook, once again arguing that sanctions policy was a failure and caused more damage to the EU than to Russia.
This argument that sanctions do not work is frequently repeated by Slovakia’s Fico as well, who, together with Budapest, blocked the latest 20th sanctions package.
This year, the Slovak prime minister is (again) planning to travel to Moscow for the 9 May celebrations — making him one of the few European politicians to do so.
Slovak PM on the left side, next to the Serbian president, during the gala reception hosted by Russian president Vladimir Putin on 9 May 2025 (Source: The Kremlin)
Unlike most European leaders, Fico has not yet been to Kyiv, and neither the Slovak foreign minister nor president Peter Pellegrini has visited the Ukrainian capital. This is also the case for Orbán and Szijjártó.
Slovakia ‘kowtowing to Moscow’
“This is a practical demonstration of ‘sovereign’ foreign policy — serving Hungarian national interests and Orbán’s regime and kowtowing to Moscow,” commented Slovakia’s former ambassador to Nato, Peter Bátor.
According to him, Slovakia comes out of this affair looking even worse, because Hungary “uses it to pursue its own objectives.”
“At the same time, it is becoming clear that leaking to Russia and acting as a Trojan horse in the EU and Nato is not an isolated incident but a matter of deliberate policy. All the trips by the prime minister, party leaders and the indicted deputy speaker of parliament to Moscow increasingly fit into this concept. Is it even possible any more to doubt what they go there to do?” he said.
Bátor also pointed out that the Slovak intelligence services apparently were not fulfilling their basic duties and either had no information about it, or were not dissuading the government from such cooperation, and therefore, in his view, were part of the entire system of collaboration with Russia.
“How, in such a situation, can we expect anyone to share intelligence with Slovakia when there is already clear evidence that we are collaborating with Russia and Hungary and that the common European interest is of no concern to us?” Bátor asked.
“I recommend that the government and the president rather publish in advance the content of their talks with the Russian side as well as the extent and form of further collaboration. Because to think that Hungarian officials would be wiretapped and ours would not is probably naive. So it is probably only a matter of time before transcripts of recordings of Slovak officials appear.”
The Slovak politician Branislav Gröhling has already filed a criminal complaint against Robert Fico, over suspicions of treason, and the case is being handled by the National Criminal Agency’s organised crime unit.
“At this stage, the content of the complaint is being examined and an assessment is underway as to whether the facts stated fulfil the elements of a criminal offence,” the police said.
How they asked for Usmanov to be delisted
The published phone call does not mention a request to delist Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov himself. But Slovakia and Hungary blocked, almost until the last moment this March, the latest extension of the sanctions package, which covers roughly 2,700 people, over the two oligarchs, Usmanov and Fridman.