Archive

BUDAPEST — In the run-up to Hungary’s pivotal election in April, a unit of Russia’s foreign intelligence service last month began sounding the alarm over plummeting public support for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose friendly ties to Moscow have long given the Kremlin a strategic foothold inside NATO and the European Union.

Officers from the intelligence service, or SVR, suggested that drastic action might be necessary — a strategy they called “the Gamechanger.” In an internal report for the SVR obtained and authenticated by a European intelligence service and reviewed by The Washington Post, the operatives proposed a way to “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign” — “the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban.”

“Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system,” the operatives wrote in a report prepared for the SVR’s main unit for political influence operations, Directorate MS, or Active Measures Department.

  • leoj@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    9 hours ago

    I wonder where else this might of been attempted, like maybe somewhere where they had a crane with a flag ready to lower to set up a shot, with severe security flaws, and for some reason instead of hiding the VIP jumped up and put up their fist?

    Yeah I wonder where else…