This was stated by Vitaliy Dyachuk, analyst at the Institute for Central European Strategy (ICES), in an interview on the program European Space with Yuriy Fizer on Espreso.“This entire rhetoric has several audiences, several directions. Undoubtedly, the main audience is Hungarian society itself, which is thus being prepared for the elections scheduled for next year – in April 2026. And we see these outbursts of negative rhetoric directed toward Ukraine,” he said.Dyachuk added that they occur situationally and really in bursts.“Relations go on, negotiations take place. We can recall May, when bilateral intergovernmental commission talks were supposed to happen in Uzhhorod. But due to the spy and then diplomatic scandal, this meeting was postponed at Hungary’s initiative, as it did not consider the circumstances favorable for negotiations. So, on the one hand, everything seems to go well, but when some incident happens in Ukraine that Hungarian leaders perceive as negative, they do not hesitate to use it in their own interests,” the analyst noted.He emphasized that the first aspect is that Hungarian society must be kept mobilized before the elections.“They need to mobilize the electorate, because right now the position of Viktor Orbán’s ruling party compared to Péter Magyar’s opposition party Tisza is quite uncertain. But for Ukraine, it’s important to find arguments for both sides — for the Hungarian government as well as the opposition, to communicate with them,” Dyachuk pointed out.According to the analyst, the second audience Orbán is working for is the EU itself.“From the very start of this term, and later when Hungary assumed the presidency of the European Union, he has tried to assert himself as a politician of global scale, to show that even the newly elected U.S. president Donald Trump takes him into account. And Trump essentially confirmed this by naming Orbán directly before announcing the Alaska talks. Through his pro-peace stance, peace voyages, and policies, Orbán has tried to assert his influence at the EU level — to ensure that both Hungary and Orbán personally are taken into account,” he said.Dyachuk believes the third audience, indirectly, is Russia.“To which he shows a readiness for further cooperation in one way or another. He demonstrates that contracts with Russia matter to the Hungarian government, that this energy cooperation is important, and he essentially works to somehow — I don’t know if we should call it ‘repay,’ but to somehow show loyalty to the Russian ruling elite,” the analyst concluded.