A leaked transcript of an October phone call between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Russian President Vladimir Putin reveals the extent to which Budapest has worked to undermine European sanctions and support Moscow's strategic objectives, according to documents obtained by The Guardian.
In the call, Orbán tells Putin "I am at your service" and describes himself as a "mouse" helping the Russian "lion," using a fable metaphor to explain Hungary's role in weakening EU cohesion on sanctions policy. The transcript, which European intelligence services authenticated, represents the clearest evidence yet that a sitting EU member state leader has actively collaborated with Russia while Russia wages war against Ukraine.
"I cannot fight against you, you are the lion," Orbán says in the October 14 call, according to the transcript. "But I can help you. I am the mouse who can gnaw at the rope that binds you." The rope, in Orbán's metaphor, refers to EU sanctions that have targeted Russian energy exports, financial institutions, and individuals since February 2022.
The leaked conversation reveals that Hungary systematically obstructed sanctions packages, demanded carve-outs for Hungarian energy imports, and provided Moscow with advance warning of EU deliberations. In one exchange, Orbán tells Putin that he successfully delayed a sanctions vote by "two weeks, maybe three" to give Russian companies time to reorganize their supply chains.
To understand today's headlines, we must look at yesterday's decisions. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary has been the primary impediment to unified European action. Budapest blocked or delayed 11 separate sanctions packages, demanded exemptions for Hungarian energy purchases from Russia, and refused to allow weapons transfers to Ukraine across Hungarian territory.
What was previously interpreted as nationalist posturing or economic self-interest now appears to have been coordinated strategy with Moscow. The leaked transcript suggests Orbán was not merely protecting Hungarian interests but actively serving as a Russian agent within EU decision-making structures.
The timing of the leak is explosive. The transcript emerged just as U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Budapest to campaign for Orbán's re-election ahead of Hungary's April 13 parliamentary elections. Vance has repeatedly praised Orbán as a model conservative leader and defended his relationship with Russia as pragmatic rather than compromised.
European officials responded with barely concealed fury. "This is exactly what we suspected but could never prove," a senior EU diplomat told reporters in Brussels on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. "He wasn't just looking out for Hungary. He was working for Moscow."
Poland's Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski called for Hungary's suspension from EU decision-making on security matters. "A country that actively undermines collective defense while we face the greatest threat to European security since 1945 cannot continue to participate in those discussions," Sikorski said at a press conference in Warsaw.
The revelation poses a constitutional crisis for the European Union. The bloc operates on consensus for foreign policy decisions, giving any single member state—including Hungary—veto power over sanctions and security measures. But the EU's founding treaties provide no mechanism for suspending a member state's voting rights based on foreign policy betrayal, only for systematic violations of rule-of-law principles.
Legal experts say the EU could invoke Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, the so-called "nuclear option" that suspends a member state's voting rights. But that process requires unanimity among the remaining 26 members, and Slovakia's government, led by pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico, has already indicated it would block such a move.
I covered the EU's eastern expansion from Brussels in the 2000s, when Hungary and other post-Communist states joined with promises to embrace Western democratic norms. The optimism of that era—the belief that economic integration and shared institutions would create irreversible alignment with liberal democratic values—has been thoroughly shattered. Orbán's phone call reveals how a determined authoritarian can exploit those same institutions to undermine them from within.
The Hungarian government has not disputed the transcript's authenticity but characterized it as "routine diplomatic communication" that has been "taken out of context." Government spokesman Zoltán Kovács said Hungary pursues an "independent foreign policy" that serves Hungarian national interests, not Russian ones.
That explanation is unlikely to satisfy European partners who now must confront the reality that one of their member states has been actively working against collective security interests while receiving billions of euros in EU funding.
