Hungary has placed the gas pipeline that straddles the Serbian border under military protection, its prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as accusations of a false-flag operation continued to swirl before a crunch election at the weekend and an official visit on Tuesday from the US vice-president, JD Vance.
Orbán travelled to Hungary’s southern border with Serbia on Monday, one day after Serbia said it had found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond.
Coming days before a hard-fought election in which Orbán is trailing in most polls, the development sparked accusations by Hungary’s leading opposition candidate of a possible “false-flag” operation aimed at influencing the ballot.
Orbán has yet to address the claims. Instead on Monday, he sought to emphasise their seriousness. “This pipeline is important, it is our lifeline,” he said in a video posted on social media. “We conducted an inspection, and I can report to the Hungarian public that the Hungarian defence forces are capable of placing this pipeline under military protection and, if necessary, defending it.”
Earlier he and several government officials had sought to imply that Ukraine was involved in the incident – a charge roundly rejected by Kyiv, which said it had most likely been a “Russian false-flag operation as part of Moscow’s heavy interference in Hungarian elections”.
Orbán, who since taking power in 2010 has turned Hungary into what he...
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