A network of TikTok accounts, partly linked together, has multiplied videos parodying the main Hungarian opponent Péter Magyar, or predicting chaos if he were to win the legislative elections scheduled for April 12, crucial for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, at the head of the country since 2010.

Published on: 04/08/2026 - 5:54 p.m.

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A few days before the election, Péter Magyar, leader of the Tisza party, is leading the polls. The threat is therefore real for Viktor Orban, whose defeat certainly worries Moscow, the Hungarian Prime Minister openly supporting Vladimir Putin. The context is very tense: on April 6, after the discovery of explosives near a gas pipeline in Serbia transporting Russian gas to Hungary, Viktor Orban accused Ukraine, while Péter Magyar considered that it was "an operation under a false Russian flag as part of Moscow's interference in the Hungarian elections".

The possibility of Russian interference in these legislative elections is not new, and the fears of the Hungarian opposition focus in particular on the dissemination of false content on social networks, like what may have happened in Moldova in 2025.

In a report published on April 3, TikTok said it had detected since the start of the year six networks with 400 accounts in total aiming to influence the April 12 election, most of them favorable to Fidesz.

Alice Lee, an analyst at NewsGuard, a disinformation observatory, investigated fake news networks targeting this election:

"There are still undecided voters in Hungary and Fidesz, Viktor Orban's party, really hopes to rally them to its cause. So the efforts are intensifying, and I think it will become even more pronounced as the election approaches."

A network targeting Viktor Orban's rival on TikTok

Newsguard highlighted a pro-Orban manipulation campaign carried out on the social network TikTok in the run-up to the elections, in an investigation published on March 23. A network of at least 34 accounts used videos created with artificial intelligence (AI) in an effort to discredit Péter Magyar, the opponent of the nationalist leader who has been in power for 16 years.

Alice Lee continues:

“For example, we discovered an account that posted AI-generated videos featuring celebrities. They included Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jake Paul.”

In these videos, Viktor Orban, nicknamed the "boss", represents freedom and stability, unlike his rival, who is associated with an image of disorder, as well as the European Union, portrayed as liberticidal. Illustration with one of these videos, an AI-generated version of actor Johnny Depp, selfie stick in hand with Budapest in the background, who recites: "With them, it would be chaos in the streets, but thanks to the boss, it's calm and there are only tourists quietly taking photos."

Other videos claim to show what Hungary would be like with Péter Magyar and his Tisza party. One of them, for example, features, via AI, a crowd of demonstrators supervised by the police with a voice commenting: “It only takes one bad decision”, implied: to tip the country over.

"Many of these videos show how 'woke' culture is allegedly entering Hungarian schools with LGBT pride flags and other such elements, with the aim of scaring the rather older and conservative base of the Hungarian electorate," says the NewsGuard expert.

The war in Ukraine also comes up regularly in these videos: "It is claimed that Péter Magyar will drag Hungary into this conflict, that the Hungarians will be mobilized, which, to our knowledge, is false", specifies Alice Lee.

Widely distributed videos

These contents went viral and accumulated 10 million views on TikTok. They are part of a coordinated movement: in two days, no less than 22 accounts linked to the same network were created, without NewsGuard being able to determine who was at the origin.

On March 19, the Hungarian media Lakmusz had already published a similar investigation to NewsGuard. He had pinned 17 TikTok accounts using AI-generated videos to discredit Viktor Orban's rival.

Most of the accounts spotted by NewsGuard and Lakmusz are now inactive, but new profiles are regularly created with identical names and processes, before being deleted by the platform. For Alice Lee:

"People know they're watching AI-generated mush, but it still helps anchor the idea and the narrative. And generally speaking, we find that this kind of content works much better with the TikTok algorithm."

Interference denounced by Péter Magyar and Viktor Orban

The Hungarian Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition have continued to denounce foreign interference in the April 12 election, with Viktor Orban blaming Ukraine and the European Union (EU) and Péter Magyar accusing Russia.

An investigation by the Financial Times, published on March 11, notably revealed that the Kremlin approved the plan of a Russian communications consulting agency, Social Design Agency, to manipulate opinion on social networks in Hungary in the run-up to the elections.

According to a document seen by the newspaper, the campaign aimed to flood social networks with content designed in Russia and relayed by influential Hungarian figures presenting Viktor Orban as "a strong leader with friends all over the world", while his main rival Péter Magyar was described as a "puppet of Brussels without any external support".

A process reminiscent of Moldova

Péter Magyar denounced a well-established disinformation campaign on

Péter Magyar denounces on X a disinformation campaign targeting him

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The Moldovan legislative elections of September 2025 were indeed marked by Russian interference and by disinformation campaigns making extensive use of videos generated by AI to try to manipulate opinion. “In September 2025, TikTok deactivated more than 13,000 inauthentic accounts active during the Moldovan elections, used to discredit the [pro-European, Editor's note] government and amplify pro-opposition speeches,” indicates a report from the European External Action Service (EEAS), published in March.

“Electoral processes constitute a main axis of Russian information manipulation activities abroad,” underlines the EEAS. He is already warning that Armenia should be among the main targets of Russian intelligence services in the run-up to the legislative elections in June 2026.

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