DISINFO: Hungarian intelligence services prevented a Ukrainian plot to kill Viktor Orban
SUMMARY
Hungarian intelligence services prevented an assassination attempt against Viktor Orban planned by Ukraine, Hungarian publication Demokrata reported. The plot aimed to kill Orban on 05 July prior to his trip to Moscow, by blowing up his car in the way to the airport. Explosives were to be activated through a remote control system. According to this outlet, the attack could have been supervised by representatives of the Ukrainian intelligence. One of the authors of the attempt was a refugee from Ternopil who lived in Hungary for years.
RESPONSE
The claim is false, and the source of the story is fake. The site linked in some of the posts who spread this story, Demokrata.net, is not real: it is a cloned page of the real Hungarian outlet Demokrata.hu, in which the main cover story was removed to include a forged article with these allegations and then spread it as real in pro-Kremlin Telegram channels, as Ukrainian fact-checkers have found. No real outlets have reported on this incident, which only appeared in pro-Kremlin media and Telegram channels in different languages.
Falsifying content from real Western outlets to advance pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives is a recurring practice, as shown by cases such as the so-called Doppelganger network.
The goal of this disinformation story is to erode international support for Ukraine by framing its intelligence services as committing terror attacks and political murders of elected leaders abroad.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Ukraine is involved in the assassination attempt on Trump, that Washington and Kyiv are behind the attempt to assissinate Slovak PM Robert Fico, that Ukrainian special services recruited Islamists to carry out a terrorist attack in Crocus City, or thatthe Kyiv regime is a global terrorist threat.