Goulash: Orbán Propagandist with GRU Ties and Black Cube in Hungary; Babiš and Czech River Poisoning

FRESH FROM VSQUARE

PRO-ORBÁN PROPAGANDIST’S TIES TO RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE EXPOSED

He receives talking points from a GRU officer that later surface in his podcasts and media commentary. He travels to Moscow on trips organized by the Russian Defense Ministry and promises his GRU contact to report back in Hungarian outlets. Who is he? Well, he’s Georg Spöttle, an eccentric German-Hungarian propagandist who not only champions Viktor Orbán’s government but openly supports Vladimir Putin’s regime as well. Published this morning in Hungarian (find it here), my new investigation for Direkt36 reveals how Spöttle mingles with Hungarian ministers—he was even named as a favorite podcaster by foreign minister Péter Szijjártó—while a national security screening of one of his close acquaintances uncovered Spöttle’s direct ties to Russian intelligence. From little gray men to little green men—read the story of a former German policeman turned UFO believer turned Orbán–Putin propagandist (yes, really) here. (Additionally, here’s my earlier piece on Spöttle’s main GRU contact, former Russian military attaché to Hungary Oleg Smirnov.)

THE ‘CZECH TRUMP’ AND THE MYSTERIOUS POISONING OF THE BECVA RIVER

A year before the 2021 Czech parliamentary election, then-prime minister Andrej Babiš faced a political storm after a chemical spill killed thousands of fish in the Bečva River, with widespread suspicion falling on a factory owned by his Agrofert conglomerate. Although the company denied responsibility, the spill occurred just downstream from the factory’s waste-water outlet. Zuzana Vlasatá has been reporting on the Bečva case and its aftermath for years; in this English language version of her investigation, originally published by Balkan Insight, she also outlines how prosecutors and courts looked elsewhere—seemingly to avoid identifying the prime suspect. 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. 

“RAFAŁ WASN’T FULLY COMMITTED.” A POLISH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DEBRIEF WITH A CAMPAIGN INSIDER

Yesterday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk survived a no-confidence vote in the Sejm—a vote he himself initiated to stop the political bleeding after his party’s candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, narrowly lost the presidential election. Despite this move, Poland remains deeply focused on trying to understand how Karol Nawrocki—a previously unknown and scandal-tainted candidate backed by the populist Law and Justice party—managed to win. I happened to be in Warsaw just after the election, where I joined Visegrád Insight’s breakfast discussion with diplomats and experts. We learned about the causes and consequences of the outcome—you can find a brief summary here. However, I also managed to talk with an insider from Rafał Trzaskowski’s presidential campaign, who described several warning signs they noticed along the way. One major concern, they said, was that both senior and junior staffers felt “Rafał wasn’t fully committed,” meaning that Tusk’s candidate didn’t seem to put enough effort and energy into campaigning. 

Last autumn, however, when early polls put them in the lead, the overconfident campaign team was “ecstatic” and chose to ignore all the red flags. “At that point, our biggest fear was that [the far-right Konfederacja party’s candidate Sławomir] Mentzen would make it to the second round and beat us 60–40 in the runoff,” the insider recalled of internal polling at the time. The campaign’s focus then shifted toward making sure that it would be the Law and Justice candidate, Nawrocki, not the surging Konfederacja leader—who was gaining popularity among young voters—who advanced. But even as internal polling made clear that Trzaskowski could lose, “the campaign was tone-deaf when it came to addressing these risks.” Ultimately, the election was widely seen as a “referendum on the Tusk government.” But, as the insider put it, “Rafał did absolutely nothing—nothing at all—to achieve what Donald Tusk managed during the 2023 parliamentary elections: speaking to multiple audiences. In reality, the voter coalition didn’t expand.” There’s now a lot of second-guessing about whether Radosław Sikorski, the foreign minister and primary challenger to liberal Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, could have won the election with his more statesmanlike and conservative appeal. 

Meanwhile, although Viktor Orbán endorsed Nawrocki and was quick to congratulate him, there was no indication this time that his Hungarian campaign strategists—Árpád Habony or the Századvég think tank—were involved in the victorious Nawrocki campaign (unlike the 2023 Law and Justice campaign, after which some blamed the defeat on bad campaign advice by Orbán’s people). However, the insider added, this time “there was a tremendous amount of Russian narrative spinning around—backed by serious money.” But while Nawrocki’s victory puts continued pressure on the Tusk government, the Law and Justice party that backed him—and its aging leader, Jarosław Kaczyński—is also feeling the heat from the rising, youth-driven Konfederacja party, setting the stage for further political drama in Poland. (For even more Polish election analysis, listen to our editor-in-chief Anna Gielewska, who joined our English language editor Emily Tamkin’s podcast, the Political Cycle, to talk about what happened and what could come next.)

HUNGARY BRIEFS INTELLIGENCE PARTNERS ON UKRAINE SPY SAGA AS PRESSURE MOUNTS ON ORBÁN’S MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

In his first-ever interview with a Hungarian outlet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a striking remark to Válasz Online: “I don’t blame Viktor [Orbán], I blame the KNBSZ,” referring to Hungary’s military intelligence service. The recent Ukrainian–Hungarian spy saga began when Ukraine’s SBU detained two Hungarian KNBSZ agents operating in Western Ukraine, where they were allegedly gathering intelligence on Ukrainian air defenses, other military vulnerabilities, and public sentiment toward a potential deployment of NATO or Hungarian troops. Throughout the interview, Zelensky repeatedly singled out KNBSZ, even suggesting the agency might be gathering intelligence for a third party. “I’m not saying Budapest wants something, but if it doesn’t—then who is it gathering information for? I asked NATO officials whether they had tasked the Hungarians with collecting such data. They said no,” he stated. Meanwhile, NATO intelligence services have received a formal briefing from Hungarian counterparts, according to a national security source I spoke with. In it, Hungary explained that since Ukraine had broken protocol by publicizing the arrests—rather than following the usual playbook of quiet expulsions or diplomatic warnings—the Hungarian government responded in kind. After that, the Hungarian government issued political orders to its own agencies to expel Ukrainian diplomats for espionage and arrest Ukrainian civilians without diplomatic immunity. In other words, it clearly wasn’t the national security services themselves that flagged the Ukrainian activities in Hungary as so threatening they had to be stopped—it was a politically driven response.

Notably, Hungary’s message to its allies also somewhat deflected responsibility toward KNBSZ, advising intelligence partners to direct any questions about the Hungarian espionage operation in Ukraine to the military intelligence agency—not to Hungary’s civilian services. Multiple government-connected sources also told me that KNBSZ has remained “extremely silent”—even within the Hungarian government and intelligence community—about why its agents were deployed to Western Ukraine for such sensitive missions, and how they ended up being caught by the SBU. Due to what’s seen as a lack of transparency or accountability, there’s growing speculation about what the agency might be hiding: sheer incompetence, reckless overreach, or something more troubling. Almost exactly a year ago in this newsletter, I reported that Hungary’s KNBSZ was teetering on the edge of disarray. The turmoil followed a purge in the armed forces ordered by Defense Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky—a former business partner of Russian rail and military supplier Transmashholding. As part of the shake-up, more than 50 highly trained military intelligence officers were dismissed, along with the agency’s pro-Western, pro-NATO director-general. At the time, I wrote: “Multiple senior career military intelligence officers, including most department and section heads, are considering resigning due to what they see as politicized and unprofessional leadership.” There’s an at least equal chance that KNBSZ was more stupid than sinister in its botched operation in Ukraine. 

HUNGARIAN NGOS SUSPECT NEW ROUND OF BLACK CUBE-STYLE STING OPERATIONS

In April and May, many of Hungary’s civil society groups, foreign and security policy experts, and other critics of Viktor Orbán’s government received various suspicious interview requests via LinkedIn or email—reminiscent of past sting operations by the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube, multiple people whose organizations received such requests revealed to me. Similar operations took place before the 2018 and 2022 Hungarian parliamentary elections. In both cases, interviews were conducted many months in advance of the elections, only for heavily edited video clips—often with quotes taken out of context—to surface later in pro-government media during the campaign. These videos aimed to portray human rights defenders and journalists as agents of George Soros, the European Commission, or other foreign actors allegedly meddling in Hungarian affairs. Among the recent targets were the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC), one of the country’s most important human rights organizations. “Traps set in 2018 and 2020-2021 have made many frequently targeted Hungarian NGOs more wary of suspicious offers of unexpected support or inquiries. It’s incredible that these covert tactics are deployed once again, when the elections are still a year away. We expect an intimidating campaign atmosphere,” HHC co-chair Márta Pardavi told me.

Some of the recent suspicious approaches came with offers of lucrative pay for writing research papers; others proposed joint grant applications, while one attempted to get every Hungarian NGO to participate in interviews with supposed students. In at least one case, a target agreed to an interview but later regretted it, realizing the individuals and the alleged consultancy involved appeared highly dubious. Others were more cautious. “We’ve only received one inquiry that clearly seemed fake—at least, the author of the email had previously worked at Black Cube,” Ágnes Urbán of Mérték Media Monitor, a Hungarian media watchdog, told me. In that message, they were invited to take part in a Visegrád Fund project built around a bogus proposal. The anti-corruption watchdog K-Monitor was also contacted by suspicious actors but immediately alerted its staff to stay vigilant. “These types of inquiries typically ask for information or propose online or in-person meetings, during which the aim is to get the target to say something that can later be used against them,” said Sándor Léderer of K-Monitor. “The people behind these approaches usually pose as researchers, journalists, potential partners, donors, or job seekers—almost always foreigners.” According to my own count, individuals from at least a dozen different organizations in Hungary were approached in a similar fashion in recent weeks.

MORE FROM OUR PARTNERS

FICO CRITICIZES INCREASING DEFENSE SPENDING, WHILE KALIŇÁK IS ARMING UP. HE HAS ORDERED MILITARY EQUIPMENT WORTH €1.8 BILLION. Slovakia’s Ministry of Defense has signed new contracts for weapons and military gear totaling €1.8 billion since 2023, according to an analysis by the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK) in cooperation with the Stop Corruption Foundation. (Text in Slovak.) 

OUR REPORTING FORCES FOREIGN MINISTER TO SUSPEND PRIVATE JET TRIPS ON TAXPAYERS’ MONEY. After Átlátszó’s exposé on the Hungarian foreign minister’s private jet use and its costs, the government changed the law to conceal such data, but following a court ruling affirming the public’s right to know, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó eventually stopped using chartered jets and now flies on military aircraft instead. (Text in Hungarian and English.)

HOW U.S. SANCTIONS CRUSHED HUNGARY’S NUCLEAR PLANT PROJECT. Direkt36’s investigation reveals that despite the Orbán government’s lobbying efforts with the Trump administration, U.S. sanctions against the Russian bank playing a key role in Rosatom’s Hungarian nuclear power plant project have effectively brought the project to a halt. (Text in Hungarian and English.)

AID FOR UKRAINIANS, CONTRACTS FOR RUSSIA. THE DOUBLE FACE OF LITOMĚŘICE-BASED HENNLICH. Investigace.cz’s article uncovers how Czech-Austrian engineering company Hennlich—an enterprise with over a century of history—has a Russian subsidiary, which supplied components for CNC machines to a military holding company that produces ballistic missiles used against Ukraine. (Text in Czech.)

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SZABOLCS PANYI & THE VSQUARE TEAM