03. června, 2025 Péter Bori
It is May 2025 and the streets across the country are lined with posters depicting Manfred Weber, Ursula von der Leyen and Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the text ‘Let’s not allow them to decide for us’. It is the latest in a series of campaigns by the Hungarian government against Ukraine’s EU membership and part of a broader narrative that aims to depict Ukrainian pleas for Western integration, military support and ideological cohesion as inherently conflicting with Hungarian national interests. In an environment where the frequency of such narratives makes digesting them an inescapable reality of daily life, surely it has embedded hate against neighbouring Ukraine, while endearing Hungarians to the Russian cause?
Well, yes and no. A survey commissioned by the CEU Democracy Institute in 2022 asked respondents how sympathetic they are to the policies of a number of states and organisations, including the EU, Ukraine and Russia. The EU scored highest, while Russia was deemed least likeable. And Ukraine? Right there before Russia, as the second least liked country by Hungarians. So, while Hungarians express a steady pro-Europeanness, their dislike of Russia and Ukraine seem to be on par. In addition, a survey by the Pew Research Center in 2023 showed that only one-third of Hungarians perceive Russia to be a major military threat to Hungary – a stark contrast to Poland’s 77 % support rate for the same question, as well as broader European opinions deeming Russia as an aggressor. While Hungarian politics is divided along the lines of support for Ukraine, the CEU survey highlights that opposition voters do not necessarily share their parties’ pro-Ukraine stance. Simultaneously – and somewhat in contradiction to European trends -, the more right-wing a voter, the more likely they are to support Russia. To complicate matters further, a 2024 study by Policy Solutions highlighted that now Hungarians perceive Ukraine (51%) to be an even bigger threat than Russia (46%).
Hungary’s fraught relationship with Russia and Ukraine may partly explain the social incongruance these numbers suggest. The Soviet Union was, after all, both liberator and oppressor in Hungary: in 1945 it drove out Nazi occupation, in 1956 it violently crushed Hungarian demands for freedom, and then continued to do so until its collapse in 1989. While the FIDESZ government at best ignores this history and at worst engages in dangerous historical revisionism, the legacy of Soviet occupation still lives vividly in the Hungarian collective psyche – limiting the extent to which pro-Russian sentiments can proliferate.
Simultaneously, tension between Ukraine and Hungary over diminishing minority rights of the nearly 150.000 ethnic Hungarians living in Transcarpathia have dominated neighbourhood diplomacy in the 2010s. Orbán’s move to extend dual citizenship (and therefore voting rights) to ethnic Hungarians living in formerly Hungarian territories in 2010 generated widespread support at home and has been an important cornerstone of FIDESZ’ electoral victories ever since. Ukraine perceived Hungary’s passport distribution as a threat to its sovereignty and national integrity, and in turn implemented an educational law in 2017 mandating that Ukrainian become the primary language taught in schools. Hungarians both at home and in Ukraine decried the law as violating minority rights guaranteed by international treaties and such tensions also spilled into contemporary wartimes: Hungarian minorities were conscripted as part of Ukraine’s widespread mandatory mobilisation and a general narrative dominating in Hungary perceived ethnic Hungarians as fighting a war they should not be involved in.
So while Hungarian society seems mostly unphased by a war happening next door, increasing polarisation in a sea of propaganda and historical tensions are key factors in how people perceive the war and its consequences. In such a context, an interesting arena of social division is the country’s reception of Ukrainian refugees.
If there is one country in Europe that has gained the reputation of not being a refugee-welcome destination, it surely is Hungary. During the 2015 refugee crisis, Orbán staunchly protested letting asylum seekers into the Schengen Zone, arguing that it risks not only Hungarian national security and social cohesion, but the Christian identity of the European continent in its entirety. Since then, migration and the ‘existential risk’ of permitting the ‘Other’ within the walls of Fortress Europe has formed a backbone of FIDESZ’ rhetoric and political communication strategy. From opposing EU resettlement quotas to building a barbed-wire fence along the southern border, and painting Brussels and the global liberal elite as attempting to flood Europe with migrants, the message broadcasted by Orbán post-2015 has been clear: refugees, stay away. A 2025 report by ODI Global shows that such sentiments are not restricted to the leading political elite: while immigration itself was found to rank far below other top concerns, public attitudes towards immigration are significantly more negative than in other European countries and Hungarians repeatedly score amongst the lowest on welcoming and openness towards refugees.
Yet, in 2022, such seemingly deep-seated political and social fears seemed to dissipate, as Ukrainian refugees began arriving at the Hungarian border. Top FIDESZ officials were eager to showcase that Hungary is implementing the largest humanitarian action in its history. In 2015, Orbán refused to visit any of the refugee camps in the south of Hungary. Now he was posting videos of him personally handing over travel documents to Ukrainian mothers. The obvious hypocrisy notwithstanding (i.e. ‘we like refugees, as long as they are white’), the Hungarian response has indeed been overwhelmingly positive and supportive, just not necessarily by the Orbán government. The government turned the spotlight inwards by headlining the large amounts of refugees it was letting in: since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia 5.5 million border crossings took place by Ukrainians into Hungary. However, this number includes back-and-forth work-related travel, as well as onward travel to other European countries. In reality, just over 60.000 of these people actually seeked asylum in the country. And while the state provided mass accommodation options for those traveling onwards, Ukrainians who opted to stay have continued to face difficulties gaining access to permanent and independent housing solutions. Many who opted to stay are primarily Transcarphatian or Roma, the latter of whom did not fall under the state’s refugee assistance program and faced increased risk of homelessness – having no home to return to in Ukraine either.
In an environment where institutions responsible for healthcare, public housing and aid are completely depleted, it is not the Hungarian government, but the Hungarian people that filled the gap left by a decade of faulty governance. The swift response of civil society (mostly those organised during the 2015 crisis), the magnitude of volunteer turnout, the mobilisation of financial and material donations, and the involvement of various charitable organisations showed that Hungarians were sympathetic to the millions of refugees in need of assistance in 2022. Yet, this positive mobilisation continues to be paralleled with anti-refugee sentiments as well. The 2024 survey by Policy Solutions indicated that only 17 % of respondents would feel okay about having Ukrainian refugees as neighbours, while 49 % stated that they would rather not.
Overall, it seems that Hungary is host to two (or more) parallel realities when it comes to the war raging in Ukraine. There’s the reality propagated by Viktor Orbán’s ruling regime: one where the government is apparently generously aiding Ukrainian refugees, while arguing that any attempt at Ukraine moving closer to the European Union is detrimental to Hungarians, and in the meantime promoting a war-narrative that is eerily similar to messages coming from the Kremlin. A reality which is steeped in anti-refugee attitudes. In another reality, Hungarians stepped up in actually aiding Ukrainian refugees and continue life with a degree of shared ambivalence towards both Russia and Ukraine.
Yet, Orbán’s posters across the country are touching upon a topic that will possibly cause increasing worry amongst Hungarians in coming months. As the country continues to struggle through inflation, high prices and economic uncertainty, social attitudes might become more tense and polarise further when it comes to Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. Already in 2023 and 2024, farmer protests in Germany and Poland inspired similar mobilisation by Hungarian farmers worried about the import of Ukrainian grain and its effects on Hungarian producers. Indeed, a recent survey by the Republikon Institute showed that 46 % of Hungarians do not support Ukraine’s EU accession. While this leaves a large margin of society that does support it, 32% of these people tie their endorsement to the accession taking place in no less than 7-10 years.
The social impacts of the war in Ukraine on Hungary are largely measurable in an increasingly polarising attitude of Ukrainian refugees, as well as Russia and Ukraine as state actors. A closer look at the economy – and particularly top-down narratives on the economy – in our next article may shed better light on how Hungarian society will transform its perception of what the war next door means to life in the country.
The article was written in the framework of the project Reflections of the War in Ukraine in Visegrad Countries. The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
ROČNÍK XIV. – 2. ČÍSLO, ČERVEN 2025