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.
TWO MORE POLISH CITIZENS RECEIVE ASYLUM IN HUNGARY
Just before Christmas, Hungary’s EU delegation sent a letter to all other member state delegations in Brussels informing them that Hungary had granted asylum to citizens of another EU country: Poland. Multiple European diplomats confirmed the letter to me, which reads: “Hungary informed the Council [of the European Union] on 23 December 2025 that a decision has been taken to approve the asylum application of two Polish citizens.” The names, however, were conspicuously absent. I asked three Hungarian ministries — the Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office, foreign affairs, and justice — for clarification. None replied. As avid Goulash readers will know, this means the number of Polish fugitives sheltered by Viktor Orbán has now risen to three.
Almost exactly a year earlier, in December 2024, Hungary granted political asylum to former Polish deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski, who is wanted at home for 11 financial crimes related to the alleged defrauding of the so-called Justice Fund. Through a public information request, I was able to confirm that Viktor Orbán used a bogus ultra-conservative pamphlet as justification for Romanowski’s asylum. It was published by the same Orbán proxy think tank — the Center for Fundamental Rights — which subsequently employed Romanowski. Meanwhile, I also revealed in this newsletter that Polish prosecutors began investigating whether Hungarian citizens had helped Romanowski evade justice and go into hiding — an offense punishable by up to five years in prison. Then, in late 2025, Romanowski’s former boss, ex–justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, showed up in Budapest for an unusually long stay, just as criminal charges were being prepared against him and his immunity was lifted by the Sejm. He even met Viktor Orbán in his office.
When Polish journalists flocked to Budapest to look for Ziobro, he brushed off their questions about whether asylum had come up in their conversation. I could not independently confirm the identities involved in the new asylum decision, so that's still a mystery. However, none of this should be shocking. Months ago, Orbán openly hinted that more Poles could be offered asylum. It now appears that the promise is being quietly fulfilled as a secret Christmas gift. The other question is how long this protection will last given that Orbán’s poll numbers still suggest he is on track to lose Hungary’s April 2026 elections.
FROM PRINT TO PIXELS: ORBÁN’S MEDIA EMPIRE SET FOR A REBUILD
Speaking of the Hungarian election campaign: despite wall-to-wall attacks, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and its vast propaganda empire have failed to seriously dent the rise of opposition leader Péter Magyar. Multiple waves of fabricated allegations were dutifully echoed across the pro-government media ecosystem — and still didn’t land. According to several media industry insiders, this isn’t just a campaign problem. Regardless of how the election goes, Orbán is expected to trim and recalibrate his media empire after the spring. The reason is simple: the old model no longer works.
In recent years, government propaganda has largely shifted to social-media operations, ads on Facebook and Google (companies happy to accept Hungarian dark money), and influencer-style messaging. Compared to that, classic outlets — especially print — look expensive, slow, and inefficient. Several industry sources say government contacts are openly floating the idea of shutting down county-level local print newspaper operations altogether (while keeping their websites alive). Ever since Orbán-linked proxies took over local papers in 2016 and turned them into uniform propaganda sheets, circulation has steadily collapsed. Readers left; costs stayed.
Another likely casualty is Bors, a low-quality nationwide tabloid, the name of which literally means “pepper,” though its recent output has been mostly bile. Sources expect its print operation to be closed after Orbán-aligned interests acquired the far more influential Blikk tabloid daily from Switzerland’s Ringier late last year. The irony is strong: Bors has recently been one of the loudest megaphones for the most absurd claims about Orbán’s opposition. It has lied so persistently that a court ordered it to stop distributing a special propaganda issue — a ruling that prompted Orbán’s allies to loudly rally to the tabloid’s defense in the name of “press freedom.” Behind the scenes, however, they are said to be planning to shut down either the print operation, or the full outlet once the election is over. So much for press freedom.
Zooming out, the shake-up reaches even higher. The entire media holding that has overseen much of Orbán’s print propaganda operation, Mediaworks Zrt, is expected to be significantly downgraded in the coming years. The political and financial center of gravity is shifting toward Indamedia — a leaner, more digital-friendly Orbán proxy that now owns Blikk and runs Index.hu, which was Hungary’s largest news outlet before its 2020 takeover. In short: in Hungary, the second half of 2026 is likely to bring fewer printing presses and more ad dashboards — less shouting on paper, more micro-targeted messaging online. For example, the type of messages we investigated — paying for Facebook ads specifically designed to smear journalists and independent media outlets.
ORBÁN WARNS OF WAR — WHILE STAYING SILENT ON RUSSIAN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE’S PRESENCE
As Hungary’s prime minister desperately tries to frame the spring 2026 elections as a choice between war and peace, his rhetoric is growing darker. Europe, he claims, is drifting toward war with Russia — and this could be Hungary’s last election before a conflict. “Brussels” and EU leaders are cast as reckless warmongers, while Viktor Orbán presents himself as the lone guardian keeping Hungary out of the fire. What he carefully avoids mentioning is the obvious: if war ever does come, it’s not Hungary’s EU or NATO allies voters should fear — it’s Russia. Which leads to an uncomfortable question: if the threat is truly that grave, why does Orbán’s government still allow a full-fledged Russian military intelligence presence to operate in Budapest?
As I’ve written before, Budapest continues to host a Russian military attaché — along with deputies and assistants at the Russian Embassy who are widely known to be partly overt, partly undercover officers of the GRU. While the other Visegrád countries expelled these officers years ago, Hungary did not. Their team is still there, still operating under diplomatic cover. To clarify the extent of official diplomatic contact, I filed a public information request with the Hungarian Ministry of Defense, asking for a list of meetings held since 2022 with the Russian military attaché and his colleagues. The ministry refused — not because such meetings never happened, but because, it argued, the information is simply “not public.” There is at least one case we know of: the Hungarian army’s deputy chief of staff met with the departing Russian military attaché at a Chinese reception. NATO allies were quite puzzled.
So to recap: Orbán warns Hungarians about an imminent war with Russia — while quietly keeping Russia’s military intelligence officers comfortably in place in Budapest and refusing to say who is meeting them.
