So much for the fear that Hungary might sit this one out. Péter Szijjártó, Orbán’s ever-faithful envoy, dutifully turned up at Beijing’s anti-West jamboree, the parade of strongmen assembled by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. He even made it just in time for Wednesday’s military spectacle, breathlessly trailing the North Korean dictator and the Slovak prime minister like a latecomer desperate not to miss the group photo.
Szijjártó and Slovakia’s Robert Fico presumably fancied themselves as the European Union’s representation at this “prestigious” gathering — never mind that NATO was already “spoken for” by Turkey’s President Erdoğan, who wasted no time in claiming the role of official spoiler-in-chief.
“We are interested in East–West cooperation, and Hungary has demonstrated the serious advantages of such civilized cooperation,” Szijjártó announced piously before boarding his flight. One wonders whether the “advantages” he had in mind were the billions in EU funds currently frozen because of Budapest’s corruption and rule-of-law problems. If that’s the reward for Orbán’s trademark “Eastern opening” and swing-state diplomacy, then congratulations: Hungary has paid dearly for the privilege of shaking hands with tyrants.
And what a line-up of tyrants it was. Szijjártó had the rare opportunity to clasp the blood-stained hand of Vladimir Putin, wanted by the International Criminal Court for bombing Ukrainian cities into dust and killing tens of thousands of civilians. He could nod approvingly to Kim Jong-un, who sends troops to support Putin’s war and, for the first time, turned up at an international event alongside his fellow despots — now with Hungary’s foreign minister in tow.
Then there was Xi Jinping, the would-be ruler of everything east of Brussels, who presides over China with an iron fist, crushing Uyghurs and Tibetans alike, and now openly preparing to “reunify” Taiwan, by military means if necessary. Orbán’s good friend Erdoğan also joined — the man with Kurdish blood on his hands and opposition leaders in his prisons, all in the name of rebuilding a neo-Ottoman empire.
Iran’s president was also on hand, fresh from railing against the US and Israel, while presiding over 841 executions in just eight months this year. Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, Szijjártó’s old buddy, offered a handshake too — having magnanimously freed 314 political prisoners this year, though not one thanks to Hungarian lobbying. And then, of course, the Turkic Council comrades, with whom Hungary toils in “observer status” to leverage some mythical Turkic kinship into oil and gas deals for MOL, the oligarchic empire of Orbán ally Zsolt Hernádi.
Even India’s Narendra Modi joined the fun, holding hands with Putin like a lovesick teenager and then locking himself in his car with the Russian leader for 45 minutes. Presumably they discussed ways to duck America’s punitive tariffs, imposed because India, like Hungary, refuses to stop buying cheap Russian oil. Almost as cheap, in fact, as the Russian weapons India buys — which, as Ukraine has discovered, aren’t quite state-of-the-art.
No one ever claimed Xi and Putin were assembling the world’s intellectual crème de la crème. Yet it is striking that at this anti-Western festival of grievance — this “Global South,” or perhaps more accurately “Wild East,” rally — the guest list included not only the ever-obstructive Turkey but also such geopolitical titans as Slovakia and Hungary, both parading as premium participants.
Fico, it seems, is already rehearsing for the post-Orbán era, ingratiating himself with the club of authoritarians in person. Orbán, meanwhile, settled for dispatching his Sancho Panza, Péter Szijjártó, as a token — just to show he still cherishes the role of chief Russian-Chinese errand boy, no matter what it costs Hungary.
The full cast: India, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Turkey, Egypt, Maldives, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, Malaysia — plus North Korea, Hungary and Slovakia. Tomorrow they will dutifully march at the military parade, each burnishing, in their own way, the “good name” of their nations.
Zsolt Zsebesi/AI
Fidesz-rezisztens forradalmárok a rendszerváltásért 