Goulash: Young Orbán as an Informant? Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal Troubles

FRESH FROM VSQUARE

HUNGARY’S FORMER PM SAYS HE READ REPORTS YOUNG ORBÁN WROTE FOR COMMUNIST SECRET POLICE

Miklós Németh, Hungary’s last communist-era prime minister, says that weeks before the 1990 election the defense minister showed him three handwritten, signed informant reports attributed to Viktor Orbán. According to Németh, the reports covered his fellow conscripts’ political, sexual and religious leanings. Orbán denies he was ever recruited. The papers may have ended up in the safe of a KGB-trained spy chief, which was emptied the day after he died. As Hungary finally opens its secret police archives, the files that would settle the matter are, conveniently, are among those nobody can find. Read my story here.

EUROPE HAS JUST LIVED THROUGH THE DEADLIEST SUMMER OF THE CENTURY. IN SLOVAKIA, HEAT CLAIMED HUNDREDS OF LIVES, SCIENTISTS ESTIMATE

Extreme heat killed more than 50,000 people in European cities in summer 2026, about two-thirds of them because of human-caused warming, according to a model built by the Urban Journalism Network and partners including the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK). Slovakia ranks tenth in Europe, with 321 deaths per million inhabitants and a Central European record of 42.2 °C. The Slovak Statistical Office counted just 12 heat deaths. Scientists say hundreds in Bratislava and Košice alone. Read the analysis here.

REVOLUTION IN A SMALL TOWN: STUDENTS WIN HISTORIC ELECTION IN SERBIA, HUNGARIAN ARTIST BECOMES MP

Two years after the Novi Sad station canopy collapse killed 16 people, Serbia’s student movement beat Aleksandar Vučić’s ruling party with 52.65% of the vote. Átlátszó’s József Makai followed the vote from Senta, a Hungarian-majority town where the students outpolled both Vučić’s SNS and its loyal ally, ethnic Hungarian leader Bálint Pásztor’s VMSZ. That victory carried Tibor Lázár, a Hungarian artist who had been a regular at the protests, from 72nd place on the list into the Serbian parliament. Check it out.

HUNGARY ADMITS WRONGDOING, SETTLES LAWSUIT BROUGHT BY ÁTLÁTSZÓ AGAINST ORBÁN’S SPO

In 2024, Viktor Orbán’s Russia-style Sovereignty Protection Office accused investigative outlet Átlátszó of espionage and disinformation, largely because the outlet files freedom of information requests. That office has since been abolished and its legal successor, the Ministry of Justice, has now admitted that six of its statements were false and agreed to pay €10,000 plus legal costs. It turns out that dissolving the agency did not dissolve the bill. Read it here.

SPICY SCOOPS

There is always a lot of information that we hear and find interesting and newsworthy but don’t publish as part of our investigative reporting — and share instead in this newsletter.

A TASTE OF “FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS”

This one isn’t a usual scoop. It’s a first taste of my new book, which came off the press yesterday and hits Hungarian bookstores on Monday. “Friends with Benefits: Putin’s Servants and Services in Hungary” is packed with never-before-told spy stories and exclusive material on how Russian intelligence and Kremlin-linked corruption entangled the Hungarian elite. The book also tries to answer the billion-forint question: why did the once fiercely anti-Soviet Viktor Orbán turn to Moscow? I weigh multiple theories against the accounts of credible witnesses and experts. One theory involves kompromat – compromising material in Russian hands – from Orbán’s year as a conscript, as former PM Miklós Németh’s account suggests. Another involves his and his government’s direct contacts with the FSB and the SVR.

At least two Russian officials stand out in my reporting. The first is Vyacheslav Ushakov, not to be confused with Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov. He was a former deputy director of the FSB and the founding head of its 5th Service, which spies on former Soviet republics. Several former Hungarian ministers told me on the record that Ushakov was Putin’s point man for Hungary in the 2000s, with a hand in the era’s shadiest dealings. He even received a Hungarian state award and played a major part in one of the country’s most notorious espionage cases. Yet the Hungarian public has never heard his name. The second is Tigran Garibyan, a suave SVR officer and Putin’s perennial Hungarian interpreter. He became the Kremlin’s fixer in Budapest, cultivating Orbán’s officials and propagandists and feeding them Russian narratives that then reached Hungarian audiences (Catherine Belton in The Washington Post had already mentioned his activities).

My book also digs into the archives to show how it all began. Two figures from the Soviet era and the 1990s are Nikolay Kosov, a senior KGB officer who became Soviet intelligence’s chief adviser to Hungary’s interior ministry, and Semion Mogilevich. Mogilevich, “Uncle Seva,” headed what Hungarian counterintelligence reports called the Soviet Mob, while the FBI labeled it the Semion Mogilevich Organization, or Red Mafiya. He moved to Budapest in 1990, just as the Soviet Army and the KGB advisers were leaving. Thanks to Hungary’s half-hearted regime change, the networks of the KGB and the Russian mob survived for decades, all the way through Orbán’s rule. Hungarian speakers can already listen to me talk about the book in this podcast, and those who haven’t ordered a copy yet can do so here.

BREWING IN THE BOTTOM

VSquare’s Tamara Kaňuchová’s talked with Wojciech Przybylski to unpack the political crisis surrounding Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal.

The drama inside and out of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal. The Polish constitutional crisis started on Friday. Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended Tribunal President Bogdan Święczkowski for one month. Prime Minister Donald Tusk was away when the president of the Tribunal was suspended. Polish President Karol Nawrocki cut his trip short and joined the protesters in front of the Constitutional Court and entered the building. 

This procedure was initiated by the justices who Nawrocki unlawfully refused to swear in. The judges still took the oath earlier in October, relying on the guidance of the Venice Commission. Their main goal is to repair the Polish judiciary without political interference, which has been the main struggle under the Law and Justice (PiS) government. 

“The PiS, law and justice party leader, Jarosław Kaczyński has apparently been preparing to rally in front of the tribunal. A provocateur, who ended up detained, triggered police reinforcements. The police reacted by mobilizing riot police to stabilize the situation. And that was perfect staging for Kaczynski, who started to talk about Tusk doing a coup d’etat, we need to mobilize, we need to be united,” editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight, Wojciech Przybylski told VSquare. The suspended president of the Tribunal, Święczkowski, was blocking the functioning of the new judges, denying them access to the court and making the whole institution essentially dysfunctional. “He’s also been previously a confidant, basically a right hand of, Zbigniew Ziobro.” Ziobro is the former justice minister, wanted on multiple criminal charges, who first fled to Hungary, then, after the fall of Orbán’s government, to the United States. 

“The Constitution is not precise enough on what to do and how to proceed in an internal dispute like this one. So other than reaching a certain compromise and a self-repair of the system by justices, it’s not going to work,” Przybylski said. After the restoration of the Tribunal, judges managed to unanimously approve the Tribunal’s budget for 2027. Keeping this law stalled if the Tribunal stayed dysfunctional would have given Nawrocki legal grounds to dissolve the parliament. “Certainly, in political terms, so legal terms aside, which just will have its natural course, in political terms, it also fuels a certain polarization on both sides. So there are people who, well, the base of the civic coalition is more or less satisfied because action has been taken, finally. And on the side of, on the PIS, they became now the defenders of democracy,” Przybylski added. 

MORE FROM OUR PARTNERS

If you like our scoops and stories, here are some more articles from our partners!

SPYING AND INTIMIDATION: CHINA KEEPS TIBETANS IN EXILE UNDER WATCH TOO, SAYS A TIBETAN PRINCESS. Interviewed by Investigace.cz during a visit to Prague, Tibetan royal and independence activist Namgyal Dolkar Lhagyari describes Beijing’s transnational repression: threats arriving by phone and email, physical surveillance in Europe and the US, and cyberattacks on the exile government. Tibetans, she says, have come to treat all of this as normal. (Text in Czech.) 

BRUNETTE ANNA IS LOOKING FOR WAREHOUSE WORKERS. THE PROBLEM: SHE DOESN’T EXIST. Investigace.cz spent months answering job ads aimed at Ukrainians in Czech Telegram and Facebook groups. It found anonymous “coordinators” and recruiters with stolen profile photos, like “Anna,” whose face also turns up on Russian dating sites and in a Telegram channel supplying pictures for fake female profiles. Behind these profiles is a grey zone where workers often can’t tell who actually employs them until their pay goes missing. (Text in Czech.)

A WEALTHY BUSINESSMAN MADE SUBSTANTIAL DONATIONS TO AN ORGANIZATION THAT SPREAD FIDESZ PROPAGANDA. Direkt36, with OCCRP, uncovers how Lőrinc Mészáros’s longtime business partner László Szíjj, whose Duna Group built a fortune on state contracts, also chipped in more than $900,000 to the pro-Fidesz Megafon social media propaganda outfit in 2024–25 through his company Vakond Via. (Text in English and Hungarian.)

“WE WERE THE GUINEA PIGS”: ALLEGATIONS OF FEAR AND HUMILIATION AT THE HUNGARIAN STATE OPERA’S BALLET SCHOOL. Parents and former pupils of the Opera’s fee-paying ballet school describe public humiliation, brutal workloads and pressure to donate. Átlátszó also found that a foundation backing the school, once chaired by the wife of a Fidesz-era state secretary, received HUF 24 million from the Prime Minister’s Office, which is now examining a possible conflict of interest. (Text in English and Hungarian.)

DESSERT AND FURTHER READINGS

For those still hungry for more, we’re finishing today’s menu with a couple of recommendations from our friends and colleagues.

“DEMOCRACY WON IN AMERICA”: POLISH LEADERS REACT TO US MIDTERM ELECTION RESULTS. Notes from Poland’s Daniel Tilles rounds up Warsaw’s split reaction to the Democrats taking both houses of Congress: a beaming Donald Tusk, a speaker of parliament comparing Trump’s “VETO” cap to President Nawrocki’s record vetoes, and the president’s camp warning Tusk that no government lasts forever.

REFRAMING SECURITY THREATS IN POLAND. On November 2, Poland launched a security operation along the Kaliningrad border after intelligence warnings of possible Russian sabotage. Kremlin-linked channels barely covered the operation itself. Instead, EK Stratcom’s Sasha Starost and Egor Kuroptev show, Pravda PL, InfoDefense, Dugin-linked DD Geopolitics and others used Poland’s constitutional crisis to mock the very idea of Russian interference. Dmitry Medvedev set the tone: “Constitutional coup in Poland? Of course, it’s Russians!” The same channels cast Donald Tusk as Brussels’ puppet, warned that euro adoption would mean handing Poland’s gold to Frankfurt, and boosted Grzegorz Braun’s hint that President Nawrocki’s life could be in danger. Meanwhile, Russian war bloggers recast Warsaw’s border defenses as a NATO bridgehead for attacking Kaliningrad. Read the analysis here.

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE COLLECTING A DEBT. ESTONIA SAYS IT WAS RUSSIAN SABOTAGE. In The Baltic Flank newsletter, Holger Roonemaa and Sanita Jemberga reveal that the three Latvian career criminals who set fire to the Tallinn facility of Milrem Robotics, a drone maker whose vehicles serve in Ukraine, believed they were collecting a debt and were reportedly stunned to learn they had been working for the GRU.

WASHINGTON WANTS THE BALTICS TO STAY QUIET ON THE RUSSIAN THREAT. Tomas Hrivnak’s how we cee it picks up Reuters’ report that Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby told the Baltics to stop “poking” Moscow, even as a joint investigation counted 54 Russia-linked arsons, sabotage attempts and drone incidents in Europe over the past six months.

This was VSquare’s 73rd Goulash newsletter. I hope you gobbled it up. Come back soon for another serving. 

Still hungry? Check the previous newsletter issues here! 

SZABOLCS PANYI & THE VSQUARE TEAM