Kremlin says it won't congratulate Hungary's new leader due to ‘unfriendly country’ status

The Kremlin has no plans to congratulate Péter Magyar, whose Tisza party swept Hungary's parliamentary elections over the weekend, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.

"We don't send congratulations to unfriendly countries. Hungary is an unfriendly country — it supports sanctions against us," Peskov said.

In April 2022, however, Vladimir Putin personally sent a congratulatory telegram to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán after his Fidesz party won re-election, even though Hungary had already been placed on Russia's official list of "unfriendly states" the previous month. When a journalist asked whether that meant Moscow had been friendly with Orbán personally rather than with Hungary as a country, Peskov said: "We had a dialogue with him."

Peskov also played down the election's significance for the war in Ukraine. "I don't think this has any bearing on the prospects for the Russian-Ukrainian conflict," he said. "These are probably separate processes — I don't see a connection."

Over the past four years, Orbán’s government had repeatedly obstructed EU aid packages to Ukraine. In March and April 2026, a series of investigations by independent media outlets revealed that Hungarian officials had routinely coordinated with Moscow to advance Russian interests within the EU.