Hungary Rattled By Russia Pipeline Scare As One Claim Gains Traction

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called an emergency defence council meeting on Sunday after powerful explosives were found near a pipeline in Serbia that carries Russian gas to the country.

The incident prompted political scrutiny in Hungary at a sensitive time days before a national election, with Orban’s party trailing in opinion polls.

Orban said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a close ally, had informed him by phone about the discovery outside the town of Kanjiza, near Hungary’s border with Serbia.

“Our units found an explosive of devastating power,” Vucic said in a post on Instagram. “I told PM Orban that we would keep him updated on the investigation.”

Officials in Budapest and Belgrade did not respond to requests for comment about the incident, which comes before pivotal elections on April 12 in Hungary where nationalist Orban is fighting to hold onto his more than 16-year grip on power.

A former Hungarian intelligence official told Reuters there had been discussions in Hungarian security circles over the past days about a precise plan for a “false-flag” operation impacting the pipeline in Serbia as part of an effort to influence the Hungarian vote.

Peter Magyar, leader of the opposition Tisza party also raised doubts about the incident, saying it appeared aimed at boosting Orban’s electoral prospects.

“Several people have publicly indicated that something will ‘accidentally’ happen at the gas pipeline in Serbia at Easter, a week before the Hungarian elections. And so it happened,” Magyar said in a statement.

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In a Facebook post after the defence council meeting, Orban suggested the incident related to an attempt to blow up the pipeline, which transports Russian gas through the Balkans to Central and Eastern Europe.

“According to information that we have….there was an act of sabotage prepared,” Orban said after the meeting, adding that both countries have strengthened the protection of the pipeline.

Without directly blaming Ukraine for the incident in Serbia, Orban said “Ukraine has been for years trying to cut off Europe from Russian energy.”

“The Russian section of TurkStream is also under continuous military attack. Ukraine’s efforts pose a life-threatening danger to Hungary,” he added.

The head of Serbia’s Military Intelligence Agency, Djuro Jusic, said the explosives found on a section of pipeline linked to the Turkstream system, which carries Russian gas to Turkey and then to Central Europe, were produced in the United States.

“We had information that a person from a migrant community, with military training, will carry out a diversion on the gas infrastructure,” he told reporters in Belgrade. He did not give further details, but said authorities in Serbia were searching for that person.

Orban in February scaled up security around energy infrastructure in the country by dispatching troops after what he said were plans by Ukraine to disrupt the Hungarian energy system – charges Kyiv denied.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry strongly rejected what it said were attempts to link Kyiv to the explosives.

“Ukraine has nothing to do with this,” foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said on X. “Most probably, a Russian false-flag operation as part of Moscow’s heavy interference in Hungarian elections.”

Budapest has also been in a dispute with Ukraine over a halt in oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline. Orban’s Fidesz party has sought to associate opposition leader Peter Magyar with Brussels and Ukraine, suggesting that voting for his Tisza party means voting for tanks and war.

Hungary is an outlier in the European Union for maintaining ties with Moscow, which voiced support for Hungary over Sunday’s incident and suggested that Ukraine was responsible.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto also blamed Ukraine, writing on Facebook that “in the past few days and weeks, the Ukrainians organised an oil blockade against us, and then tried to put us under a total energy blockade … And now we have today’s incident.”

(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Additional reporting by Lili Bayer in Brussels and Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Helen Popper, William Maclean, Christina Fincher)