Hungary’s reaction to the Ukraine crisis illustrates the tensions within Fidesz’s foreign policy discourse ahead of April’s elections

Hungarian Parliamentary elections are scheduled for 6 April. As Johannes Wachs and Lise Herman write, the Crimea crisis has inevitably formed part of the backdrop to the campaign, with over 100,000 Hungarians currently living in Ukraine. They note that the current government, led by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, has been slow to criticise Russia, in line with its ‘eastward shift’ in foreign policy. Yet there is a fundamental tension between Fidesz’s aim of pursuing closer relations with Russia and their anti-Communist rhetoric, which seeks to associate their parliamentary opposition with the former-Soviet past.