Viktor orbán

There is a wind of change blowing through the West. It emanates from Washington DC, where President Donald Trump continues to dash off executive orders; more than fifty by the end of last week, the highest number in a president’s first 100 days in four decades. The liberal mainstream media is rattled. The New York Times magazine ran a piece at the weekend in which it described Trump as "the leading light of a spate of illiberal leaders and parties flourishing in democracies around the world." The paper namechecked some of them: Poland, Holland, India, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Hungary and Russia. What unites and motivates these "illiberal" parties is their opposition to what the NYT called "liberal creep," which they regard as a civilizational threat.

Over the headline “Peace Mission,” a recent cover from the conservative Hungarian periodical Mandiner shows an awkwardly photoshopped Viktor Orbán mediating between a bemused-looking Vladimir Putin and a grim Volodymyr Zelensky. Behind Orbán, a map of the world connects Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, Washington and Budapest. One of these capitals, as they say, is not like the others. Even before Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, the chances of Orbán’s July trips to Kyiv and Moscow producing a peace settlement were slim. The Mandiner cover, however, is a revealing window into the mindset of Orbán’s conservative fans. The idea of a Hungarian prime minister mediating between squabbling great powers is both attractive and plausible to many of Orbán’s fervent supporters.