Goulash: Slovakia’s Coalition Crisis Explained; Details on Budapest’s Russian Spy Expulsion

FRESH FROM VSQUARE

INTERNATIONAL BURKE INSTITUTE: THE ACADEMIC FAÇADE OF A RUSSIAN INFLUENCE OPERATION

A “Tel Aviv think tank” with a Sovereignty Index that ranks Russia fourth, touts hundreds of listed experts and a stash of copied studies (34 of 36 sampled articles) turns out, according to OpenAI and Meta, to be part of a Russian influence operation. Several of those experts, including a Masaryk University vice rector, say they’d never heard of it. Investigace.cz’s Josef Šlerka also found that leaked papers from Moscow’s Social Design Agency sketched almost the same plan for an Israeli think tank in December 2024, though there is no evidence the agency runs the institute, and the institute rejects the allegations. Read the story here.

HEAD OF SURVEILLANCE TEAM SAYS WE SHOULD BE GRATEFUL HE SPIED ON KUCIAK

Nearly a decade after Marian Kočner had journalists tailed for his planned social media show “At the Pillory,” the trial over the surveillance finally opened in Bratislava — and lasted about 30 minutes. All five defendants pleaded not guilty, Peter Tóth filed a motion to dismiss on statute-of-limitations grounds, and the judge postponed the case indefinitely. Outside, defendant Miroslav Kriak said he believed the task to monitor journalists came from the intelligence service, which Zuzana Petková, one of the journalists followed, called ridiculous. Read it here.

HOW ORBÁN’S MEDIA PROJECT BROUGHT BUSINESS TO VILÁGI AND MKP OFFICIALS

Orbán’s government poured more than €12 million into Ma7, a Hungarian-language media group in Slovakia, and it turns out not all of it stayed in the newsroom. The Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak (ICJK) and Napunk (Deník N’s Hungarian-language news site) found that a nameless firm run by former MKP (Hungarian ethnic party) officials, whose mailbox bears no sign, earned hundreds of thousands of euros distributing the weekly at prices experts say may be inflated — while also working on the party’s election campaigns. Meanwhile, the printing went to a house in businessman Oszkár Világi’s portfolio. Read the investigation 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.

ORBÁN-ERA OLIGARCHS LAY DOWN THEIR WEAPONS AS ARRESTS MOUNT

Over the course of several weeks, Hungarian authorities put a few members of the Orbán era’s elite in handcuffs, starting with Dániel Jellinek, Hungary’s seventh-richest man and CEO of property giant Indotek, who was detained in mid-September with former state asset manager chief Norbert Szivek over alleged bribery tied to public transport bus purchases, and a court ordered month of pre-trial detention. Jellinek, a former business partner of Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz, denies wrongdoing through his company’s statement, and the detention is under appeal. Two weeks later, former ministers Balázs Hankó and Miklós Seszták were arrested within hours of parliament lifting their immunity, with courts ordering 30 days’ detention for both on separate corruption suspicions.

The people who used to run the show now seem to be laying down their weapons, a senior member of the Tisza government told me. One wealthy and key oligarch is sending messages to the government through intermediaries: in return for immunity from prosecution, he is willing to hand back assets and money. He doesn’t say this directly, but tells it to people he expects to pass it on to the Tisza government. Another oligarch has chosen a different path: becoming invisible, paying back whatever the government demands, and trying to survive on his subcontractors’ bids abroad. It’s the same strategy Austrian construction firm Strabag followed while the Orbán government kept it on a blacklist, the source said. It remains to be seen how much appetite Péter Magyar’s government has to cut deals and spare these people.

THE TEN RUSSIAN SPIES HUNGARY EXPELLED RAN AGENTS AND FED ORBÁN’S MEDIA

On September 8, Hungary expelled ten diplomats from the Russian Embassy in Budapest, but no details were disclosed. European national security officials briefed on the move have now told me more about the background. The reason for the expulsions, as one put it, was “the consistent application of professional counterintelligence practices,” after more than a decade of the Orbán government sabotaging such operations. All ten were Russian intelligence officers involved in day-to-day clandestine operations, recruitment and agent handling. They were selected on the basis of whose removal would most disrupt Moscow’s spy network in Hungary, and the list includes members of both the GRU and SVR rezidenturas. Some were also involved in cultivating pro-Orbán propagandists and feeding Russian narratives to pro-Orbán media, including as part of Russia’s attempt to meddle in the campaign ahead of April’s parliamentary elections.

Not on the list, so far, is Alexander Kurkov, the SVR’s Budapest station chief. His previous cover duties included press affairs, and he held meetings with both Hungarian journalists and foreign correspondents based in Budapest. Hungary also did not cap the number of diplomats the Russian Embassy may have, so Moscow’s foreign ministry can, in theory, send replacements. But Hungary’s counterintelligence service is expected to refuse accreditation to any newcomer with a known or suspected intelligence background, as NATO and EU partners are routinely consulted on such appointments and share what they know about incoming diplomats. Russia, as expected, retaliated by expelling Hungarian diplomats without disclosing how many. A European official told me that, as far as they knew, it was a classic reciprocal response: ten Hungarians. (For more on how expulsions of Russian diplomats work, read my interview with former Hungarian counterintelligence officer Ferenc Katrein.)

BREWING IN THE BOTTOM

VSquare’s Tamara Kaňuchová talked with experts to explain Slovakia’s new government crisis.

Slovakia’s coalition is as fragile as its environment ministry. Last week, the three party coalition government of social democrats (Smer and Hlas) and nationalists (SNS) nearly collapsed after a conflict between SNS leader Andrej Danko and Deputy Prime Minister and Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba escalated. SNS accused Taraba of failing to communicate about key decisions, and the motion to remove him passed largely thanks to SNS votes, even though the party had nominated him in the first place. President Peter Pellegrini temporarily placed Robert Fico in charge of the environment ministry, with the aim of eventually appointing the controversial Filip Kuffa as the new minister. Amid the crisis, Fico also raised the possibility of snap elections in January.

“It appears that Prime Minister Robert Fico, as he has done in the past, used the prospect of snap elections primarily as a threat against SNS and Andrej Danko, pushing them to back down in the dispute with Tomáš Taraba. In the end, however, Danko succeeded in having parliament remove Taraba, joining forces with the opposition,” Rastislav Kužel, a media and election expert, told VSquare. After Taraba’s removal, an MP from Hlas, the third coalition party alongside Smer and SNS, left the party to join forces with him. According to Taraba himself, this leaves the coalition with a razor-thin majority of 76 out of 150 seats, meaning it needs every single vote to pass legislation.

“Under normal circumstances, this would represent a clear crossing of a red line within a governing coalition. But the current political situation in Slovakia is far from normal, and I do not expect this episode to escalate further. The recent negotiations over the state budget—which was supposed to be the last major legislative hurdle for the coalition—demonstrated that the governing parties are now firmly in survival mode, almost at any price,” Kužel added.

With elections scheduled for roughly a year from now, nearly half of Slovaks would support snap elections, according to a recent poll. More than a quarter of those respondents are current coalition voters. “Hypothetically, snap elections could benefit Smer if Fico managed to leave government early enough to avoid taking responsibility for mounting problems and shift the blame onto SNS or Hlas. At the same time, Fico likes to stress that none of his previous governments ended prematurely, which makes voluntarily triggering an early election less attractive to him,” Kužel told VSquare. “For Hlas, meanwhile, there is no guarantee that it would make it into the next parliament. For SNS, that risk is even greater. Neither, therefore, has much incentive to bring the government down.”

MORE FROM OUR PARTNERS

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

KOČNER’S DEFENCE IN THE JÁN KUCIAK MURDER CASE TRIES TO DISCREDIT KEY WITNESSES. THE SENATE WEIGHS A CONFRONTATION BETWEEN ZSUZSOVÁ AND KOČNER. In the retrial over the murders of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová, Marian Kočner’s lawyers are working to undermine the key witnesses, while the judges consider putting Kočner face to face with his co-accused, Alena Zsuzsová. (Text in Slovak) 

ITALIAN COURT RULES IN MULTIBILLION VAT FRAUD CASE. A CZECH FIRM WAS PART OF IT. A Milan court has jailed six members of a Camorra-linked gang for up to seven years over a carousel VAT scam that used hundreds of shell companies and fictitious Apple headphone sales to drain European budgets of roughly €532 million (CZK 13 billion). (Text in Czech) 

SUPPORT ÁTLÁTSZÓ’S “BLACK DUST”: A DOCUMENTARY ON THE PRICE OF HUNGARY’S BATTERY RUSH. Átlátszó journalist Zsuzsa Bodnár’s eight-year investigation began when a battery factory went up next to her home in Göd, and it has since grown into a look at an industry that is reshaping the country. The film follows her path from local activist to investigative reporter through classified documents, lawsuits, environmental fines, explosions, illegal waste dumps and fatal accidents, asking what communities and the environment pay for the government’s “battery superpower” dream. The team hopes to finish the one-hour documentary by the end of the year, which is why they’re crowdfunding. (Text in English and Hungarian) 

SUPPORT DIREKT36: OCTOBER IS MEMBERSHIP MONTH. Direkt36 is hoping to land at least 2,500 donations this October to keep its investigations running, with membership starting at €20 a year and a monthly option from €5. Supporters get newsletters, e-books with the backstories of the investigations and, at the higher tiers, invitations to events with international investigative stars. (Text in English and Hungarian) 

INSIDE THE ORBÁN GOVERNMENT’S SPACE WAR. Orbán liked the idea of a state-run Hungarian satellite program, then handed it to the Orbán-linked 4iG IT and defense company over the objections of his own foreign and defense ministries. The Tisza government, which sources say sees the €2.36 billion in satellite contracts as favorable to 4iG, is now reviewing them. (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.

CZECH MEDIA UNITE AGAINST THREATS TO JOURNALISTS AND RESTRICTIONS ON INFORMATION. Forty Czech editors-in-chief, from Czech Television to TV Nova, have served politicians a rare joint appeal: stop encouraging violence against reporters, and stop picking which journalists get into public press conferences.

SPECIAL EPISODE: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT LATVIAN ELECTIONS. Latvians put all their eggs in one basket, and the basket is Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs, whose United List won 41 of 100 seats. The Baltic Flank’s Holger Roonemaa and Sanita Jemberga dig into what the record result means for budget cuts, airBaltic, Rail Baltica and Latvia’s security. Listen here.

FEAR STILL SELLS. WHAT MARKED THE ELECTION CAMPAIGN IN LATVIA. Re:Baltica serves up the full menu of Latvia’s campaign scare tactics, from Kremlin-fed disinformation to invented immigrant crime stories and AI “slopaganda” starring Ainārs Šlesers as 007.

FORBES DESCRIBES ‘EARTHQUAKE’ IN SLOVAKIA’S RICHEST LIST AS NEW LEADER EMERGES. Jozef Tkáč of J&T has dethroned Tomáš Chrenek, who sank to fifth place, as Slovakia’s billionaire club hit a record seven members, The Slovak Spectator reports.

REPORTS CLAIM TRUMP TRIED TO CHANGE POLAND’S GOVERNMENT. WHAT DO WE KNOW?. Notes From Poland explains how a secret March chat at the White House has Warsaw buzzing: unnamed sources say Trump nudged Defense Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz to ditch Tusk’s coalition for the right, while Tusk will only say it was about Poland’s “internal situation.” 

POLAND AND LITHUANIA PREPARE TO EVACUATE ONE MILLION BALTIC RESIDENTS TO POLAND IN EVENT OF WAR. No one wants to say “when,” so the interior ministers of Poland and Lithuania are quietly planning the “if”: a cross-border evacuation of a million or more Baltic civilians through the Suwałki Gap. 

THE KREMLIN SHIFTS MORE OF THE WAR’S COST ONTO RUSSIANS. Evgenii Liamin and Egor Kuroptev of the EK Strategic Communications Center show that one week after the “landslide” Duma elections, Moscow sent the bill: up to ₽1.5 trillion in new taxes and fees while defense swallows 35% of the 2027 budget.

This was VSquare’s 71st 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