u/Whats-on-Eur-Mind

There is a recent claim by Ukrainian Social Policy Minister Denys Ulyutin that the current Ukrainian government controlled population is only 22-25 million people. I found this strange because no statistics I’ve ever seen indicated this. What’s even worse it fits perfectly into the long-running Russian propaganda myth that everybody already died in Ukraine. (At this point they all died three or four times in the past four years if we believed these narratives) 

Even for seasoned followers of the war it might seem like they have no men left in the country, as we keep on hearing about their manpower issues. Even JD Vance repeated this misconception during the infamous White House clash with Zelensky. But this is simply not the case. Ukraine will not run out of men anytime soon. The military’s continuous manpower constraints are more of a political-organisational issue than a physical limitation.

These claims have led me to dig into this topic and come up with my own guesstimation on how many people live in the government controlled territories, and the full territory of Ukraine. As a TLDR, the aforementioned numbers are off by at least 4-10 million, and Ukraine’s total population is still over 35 million.

Ukraine’s recent historical demographic development

Ukrainian history consists of several tragic events, even just in the past 120 years. Population exchanges, ethnic cleansings, border changes. Two large scale genocides and three major wars. Many of these shook the demographic situation to the core. Today the country is living through such a period again.

After World War I Ukraine’s first big demographic hit began immediately in the 1920s when the Soviets deported 150,000 Ukrainians to Siberia they deemed as “Kulaks”. They were the most productive farmers of the country. This act paved the way for the horrors of 1932-1933, the Holodomor, where between 3.5 and 5 million people died of starvation in Ukraine alone.

During these devastating times, the Ukrainian demographic picture still looked relatively rosy from today’s western population-decline anxiety’s perspective. The population was growing rapidly due to high fertility rates, and even the deportations and the Holodomor couldn’t stop it rising from 28 million in 1925 to more than 33 million in 1939. This increased to more than 41 million with the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia-Volhynia from Poland, and Bessarabia and parts of Bukovina from Romania after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.

Following this came an even larger demographic catastrophe, the largest industrial war and genocide the world has ever seen, and Ukraine was among the worst hit regions. The country lost between 7 and 10 million people, including approximately 4 million military personnel, 5 million civilians, and 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews. More than 20% (some estimates claim up to 25%) of the country’s population perished in World War II, and around 40% of total Soviet losses were Ukrainians. 

Many like to repeat that it was Russia that beat the Nazis in World War II. The claim itself is deeply flawed. Even the Soviet Union’s top general Marshal Georgy Zhukov admitted that the Soviet Union couldn’t have defeated Germany without US and Allied military and economic aid. And let’s not forget that the Germans were fighting on several fronts simultaneously. Crediting even only the Soviet Union and its many nations (not just Russia) is a disservice to the partisans on the Balkans and Italy, and the French and Polish resistance. At the same time the Brits, Canadians, Australians, Poles, Indians, Americans all fought the Germans on the seas, in the air, and on the grounds in North Africa, Italy, France, and all over Western Europe. It wasn’t called a World War by accident.

The reason it might seem that the Soviets did most of the heavy lifting were the staggering losses they suffered. This - besides the obvious brutality of the German invasion - was in large part due to Moscow’s barbaric military tactics that Russia still continues to employ today. This can be summed up as “men are expendable resources”. In the later stages of the war the enormous losses had a clear imperialist reason. The Soviet leadership rushed to conquer as much of Europe as they could in preparation for the post-war world order.

Still, just as the Soviet Union couldn’t have beaten Germany without western aid, it couldn’t have beaten Germany without Ukraine.

World War II has devastated Ukraine. It gained significant territories, but even considering all of that, according to some estimates, by 1945 the country’s population fell below 28 million from the initial over 41 million.

Ukraine’s pre-invasion population

After World War II there was a rapid population growth across Europe and in Ukraine as well. We commonly refer to this as the baby boom. From the lows of less than 28 million in 1945 the country’s population peaked at 52 million in 1993. From this point, the gradual then sudden decline of Ukraine’s population began.

Even before the war it was difficult to find accurate demographic data on Ukraine. The last census was conducted in 2001, this is the only point in time for which we have precise numbers. It was 48,457,100 people. Anything after this is only an estimate.

According to projected figures, by 2014 the population declined to approximately 45,430,000. At this point, it gets even more difficult to have a clear picture because many statistics only count the government controlled territories without Crimea, but often with the already de facto Russian administered Donbas mockublics.  

At this point, I’ll enter with my own dubious estimation to the full population of the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine, and also for the parts that are controlled by the government. Since data is impossible to verify and I’ll make lots of deliberately pessimistic assumptions, these numbers could, of course, be some ways off.

First of all let’s assume that the estimation for 2014 is correct, and Ukraine starts the Russian military aggression in 2014 with 45,430,000 people. Then to begin with let’s assume that the rate of decline remained constant, and by 2026 the same amount of natural decline would have happened as between 2002-2014. This would put the population at 42,400,000 in 2026 if there were no other events occurring.

But other events did occur. Even before the full scale invasion the Covid pandemic caused the death of 112,418 people in the country. As of today, nearly 6 million Ukrainians are refugees abroad. (Most claims suggest that this number is lower today, but I will use the overestimated rounded number) These immediately drop the population to nearing 36 million people.

The casualties of the war

This is a complex and highly sensitive topic with widely different calculations.

Between 2014 and 2022 the war in Donbas killed nearly 15,000 Ukrainian citizens.

After 2022 estimating gets much more challenging. I will attempt to be the most realistically pessimistic with my calculations.

According to the UA Losses project at the time of writing, there are currently 97,869 people confirmed dead and 95,162 people missing with 4,454 captured. This is the absolute floor, the minimum military losses of Ukraine. If we add this all together it is 197,488 people. According to the project, the actual deaths are likely much higher than the nearly 100,000 confirmed here. 

While the people missing are certainly not all killed, but it’s likely that the majority of them are. Similarly, the 4,454 POW’s will most likely be eventually repatriated, but since we’re talking about how many people live currently in Ukraine, I’ll consider all of these as losses, so altogether I will be counting with 200,000 people. Once again, this is on the pessimistic end, other estimates suggest that Ukrainian forces KIA as of 2026 May might be closer to 150,000 people.

The UA Losses project doesn’t count civilian casualties, which is another unknowable element. 

The Mariupol problem brutally illustrates this. UN officials verified around 2,100 civilian deaths in the city, while Human Rights Watch using satellite imagery of mass graves estimated at least 8,000 civilians killed there, admitting that the true figure was likely significantly higher.

Other estimates for Mariupol range from 22,000 to as high as 87,000, with AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov, who was there during the siege and directed the Oscar-winning documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” estimating 70,000–80,000. Comparing these to the UN verified casualties, it’s a ratio of roughly 1:10 to 1:40 between verified and plausible actual deaths in one occupied city alone.

The OHCHR’s nearly 16,000 verified figure is almost certainly off by a factor of 3–10x for direct conflict deaths alone. Independent researchers often project a 20,000–40,000 range, which is probably a cautious mid-estimate, but the more than 100,000 figure from Ukrainian official sources isn't implausible when we factor in Mariupol's likely toll alone.

The core epistemological problem is that this war's worst civilian atrocities happened in places that became inaccessible immediately after. We'll only know the true toll if and when Ukraine regains control of those territories. Even then, only if the research work can be done before the evidences deteriorate.

All things considered I will make the harsh estimation of 350,000 Ukrainian citizens killed by Russia’s invasion between 2014 and May 2026.

Abductions and deportations of Ukrainian children

I quote Swedish MP, Carina Ödebrink’s investigation on the Russian Abductions and Deportations of Ukrainian Children.

“Sources on the number of Ukrainian children that have been forcibly deported to Russia vary: 19,546 have been confirmed by Ukraine, while the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab places the number closer to 35,000. Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights (wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court) has claimed that over 700,000 Ukrainian children have been “relocated” to Russia, while her Ukrainian counterpart, Daria Herasymchuk, estimates the true number to be between 200,000—300,000. Russia has consistently refused to provide Ukraine or other international parties with any records of transferred children, in violation of international law, which makes verifying the true number of deported children near impossible.

(…)Under any or multiple of these pretenses, children are moved to facilities in Russia, Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine, or in Russian-allied Belarus.”

Again, I will go with the seemingly excessively pessimistic estimates by Ukrainian official Daria Herasymchuk and assume that there are 300,000 children abducted by Russia, and that all of them are outside of Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.

The question of “unborn children”

78% of the adult population of the nearly 6 million Ukrainian citizens who live abroad are women. Obviously, there are many men currently away from their families serving in the military. If we also factor in the enormous dangers and uncertainties Ukrainians are forced to live under, we have to recognise that many people are unable or unwilling to have children under current circumstances. This would naturally lead to my previous assumption of natural Ukrainian population decline following the 2002-2014 trend highly unlikely.

I am unsure what to do with this, so I’ll make another - perhaps the wildest and most pessimistic - assumption and calculate that there are 150,000 children every year that “cannot be born”. If we accept this, the natural decline has increased by 600,000 since the full-scale invasion began.

Adding it all together

42,400,000 - 6,000,000 (refugees) - 350,000 (killed) - 300,000 (abducted) - 600,000 (unborn) -110,000 (Covid) = 35,040,000

This is the total minimum number of current residents of the internationally recognised territory of Ukraine. Since I took the worst number on every occasion I’d assume that the real figure should be significantly higher. If we count only the government controlled parts, we have to estimate how many people might be under Russian occupation.

According to Ukrainian sources, there are approximately 2.4 million people living in Crimea, although many of these are Russian colonists who settled the peninsula after 2014. Between 1.2 and 2.5 million Ukrainians remain in the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions controlled by Russia.

Other claims say the total number could be as high as 6 million. Considering that only Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts had a pre invasion population of more than 6 million people, I find this number plausible as the absolute worst case projection. 

Again, I will take this most pessimistic estimate into account:

35,040,000 - 6,000,000 = 29,040,000 in the government controlled territories of Ukraine. 

If we count it less pessimistically, with 2.4 million in Crimea and 1.2 million in the rest of the territories, the number would be 31,440,000 people.

So realistically even today there should be at least between 29 million and 32 million people in the government controlled territories, and at least 35 million total in Ukraine.

As to how many of these are loyal Ukrainian citizens and how many are ethnic Russians who would prefer to be part of Russia, newly settled Russians, and recent colonizers are much more difficult to tell. However, from a historical big-picture view the Ukrainian nation has serious reserves to repopulate its territories after the war is over, with the more than 6 million citizens abroad. 

Since I made a big assumption with unborn children, we must also presume that most of the adults in question didn’t suddenly lose the urge or the ability to have kids. After the war is over, we can probably expect some level of a national baby boom.

Ukraine has gone through similar massive demographic losses, and managed to recover. Other countries did too, the best recent example is Poland. No matter how this war ends the Ukrainian nation will remain numerous, will stay staunchly Ukrainian, and continue living on its historic lands.

Let's imagine a future where Russia took over Ukraine and is free to pursue its further geopolitical aims. How would that look like, and what would it mean to Europe?

Ungvári üzletemberből lett Ukrajna egyik legfontosabb és legeredményesebb katonai parancsnoka. A 2026-os évben eddig a drón egysége, "Magyar Madarai" felelősek az összes orosz emberveszteségek 33%-áért(!!), annak ellenére, hogy az ukrán hadsereg kevesebb mint 2%-át teszik ki.

Jelenleg az Orbán-kormány által ki van tiltva a schengeni övezet területéről.

During the Hungarian election campaign many foreign observers were alarmed by the similar principles Péter Magyar and Viktor Orbán seemed to represent. Many were keen to doom post about how he will change nothing about Hungary’s foreign policy towards the EU and Russia.

It is true, he came from Orbán’s Fidesz party. He is conservative, and after starting to speak out against the regime he would often highlight the issues he agrees with Orbán on. His first interview where he entered public view was more an attempt to reform Fidesz from the inside than to take it down.

For those of us opposing the government for the full previous decade and a half he was not yet a convincing candidate exactly because of that. At that stage, him being Orbán 2.0 was a real possibility. But things have changed, his political positions have matured significantly and he is a very different person today than he was back then.

What he proved himself not to be is ideologically rigid. Today in Hungary, it is becoming increasingly toxic to be analogized to the previous regime. He ran not only for a change of government, but a change of the whole system. His rise was a peaceful revolution that is historically only comparable to the fall of communism in the country.

As he moved ahead with his campaign he increasingly began to distance himself from his original Fidesz roots, and built a unique political platform largely shaped by what Hungarians wanted from him. He built his base and ideology up from scratch in a way to unify the large and very diverse crowd that wanted to get rid of Orbán.

Since this is one of the few things that keeps his supporters together, he simply cannot become Orbán 2.0. He received a mandate to get rid of the past 16, even the past 24 or 36 years, and create something entirely different. His supporters are not loyal to him personally like Orbán’s voters. If he oversteps his mandate they will turn against him.

By Moscow clearly and even at points openly trying to help Orbán win and evidence surfacing that they're directly guiding Hungary’s foreign policy, one of the main slogans that was heard after the election results came in was “Ruszkik haza!” (“Russians go home!”) - echoing the Hungarian slogan from both 1956 and 1989. Magyar promised and got a very clear assignment from the people to distance the country from Russia and get closer again to the EU.

Even if he - despite all evidence for some mysterious reason - didn’t want to do this, there are systemic realities that will strongly push him in that direction. Hungary is deeply intertwined with the EU and its member states, and Magyar’s most important immediate foreign policy goal will be to unblock the nearly €20 billion frozen EU funds.

He couldn’t support Moscow and carry on with the fight against the EU while trying to access these funds. He is strongly incentivized to shift Hungary’s foreign policy. To get the job done his foreign minister will be a seasoned foreign policy expert called Anita Orbán (the name is a coincidence) who was sidelined by Fidesz years ago after the leadership started cosying up to Moscow. Even in 2008 she was well aware of the Russian threat, and wrote a book about the New Russian Imperialism.

How did Hungary arrive here?

To understand what is happening in Budapest we have to go back to before Orbán decisively took power in 2010. 

Between 2002-2010 the socialist MSZP was leading Hungary after the end of Orbán’s first government between 1998-2002. MSZP was the successor party of the previous communist one-party administration that ruled the country between 1956 and 1989. Their two terms in government were so bad it caused Orbán’s historic ⅔ majority in 2010. 

It was plagued by numerous gigantic scandals and their deeply incompetent handling of the Great Recession, and burned through three different prime ministers. The most distinctive among them who dominated this period was a man called Ferenc Gyurcsány who was prime minister between 2004 and 2009. By the end of his rule he became the most unpopular leader in modern Hungarian history, but as a politician he was utterly shameless, unwilling to accept total defeat and was hellbent on regaining power at all cost. 

In this pursuit, he pretty much destroyed the socialist party in the coming years while aiming to position himself as the leading opposition figure against Orbán. Since he was extremely unpopular and his potential return deeply frightened most people, Orbán was extremely happy to elevate Gyurcsány to this position even if his support had never merited it. He was merely one of the many opposition figures in an increasingly fragmented political palette against Fidesz.

In the 2010s Orbán’s evermore all-encompassing propaganda demonized him further, and constantly threatened that if Fidesz loses power, one way or another Gyurcsány will return. This propaganda machine managed to turn every election into a battle against Gyurcsány. The main underlying message was ”maybe we are not perfect, but if it’s not us, it will be him again.” With this strategy and the total redesigning of the election system to only favour him, Orbán managed to win every election for the next 16 years.

By the 2020s conspiracy theories started to spread that Gyurcsány is secretly working together with Orbán because him still being active in politics seemed to be the main reason for Orbán’s unending success. During his campaign Péter Magyar took advantage of these ideas, and put the two names together in his narrative. He positioned himself against both of them, and everyone who took part in this long-running dynamic that ran the country to the ground.

He is post-Orbán Hungary’s version of Donald Trump

There are some notable similarities on how and why the two men came to power, and even in some political and rhetorical style. This does not mean that Magyar represents similar values or going to govern the same way. Quite the opposite. 

Donald Trump in politics - despite his previous career - is not a builder, but a destroyer. He successfully identified that the United States electorate is unhappy with how the system works and its leading elite. The voters put him in the White House to serve as a hammer and smash the previous order by any means necessary.

A big part of why he can get away with almost anything and nothing can change his supporter’s mind about him is because he promises to fight for them and against their opposition. Hence, the “own the libs” meme. People are willing to excuse many things as long as he “owns” the “elite” they deem responsible for their perceived cultural marginalization, diminished status and loss of dignity. This is at the core of the similarities between Magyar and Trump. 

They both rose as part of the elite, but not really part of the immediate ruling class. Sort of an elite lite, an outsider on the inside who knew the system and held a grudge against the inner circle. This likely fuelled their determination to go against them and rise to the top while giving them credibility with the voters.

This is a big part of what makes them Teflon Politicians.*

Of course this is not the only reason. Similar to Trump, Magyar is giving off an unshakeable aura of confidence which makes him perceived as competent. During their campaigns they were both acting like unstoppable forces going against immovable objects. And they showed that in a fight like that the unstoppable force can smash the immovable object. 

They not only fight the system, but visibly enjoy doing it. They make fun of it, and love ”trolling” their opposition, who struggles to find a way to successfully counterattack them. One of Magyar’s dismissing catchphrase reaction to attacks from Fidesz propagandists and politicians was simply saying “Jó vergődést” ("Have fun struggling").

Both with the cases of Trump and Magyar there were serious internal and external forces that shaped their rise, only the sides were different. Trump’s rise received help from Russia, Magyar’s from Europe. 

Trump was helped by movements independent of him interested in wrecking the system, same with Magyar. Both men were like tanks, going forward no matter what, absorbing anything that hit them.

The big picture context

Both Trump and Magyar were surfers of larger societal waves they rode masterfully. Their movements are in a large part grassroot organizations that pushed forward on different levels for one ultimate goal: total regime change that could only be achieved by making sure the frontman is elevated into the high chair. This often happened without the two leader's direct influence.

In the case of Donald Trump there were unique segments of the internet mobilizing themselves. For example, parts of 4chan, particularly its "/pol/" (Politically Incorrect) and “/b/” (Random) boards played a key role in the 2016 election by organizing "memetic warfare" to support him and to disrupt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

They created, spread, and mainstreamed pro-Trump memes, and disseminated conspiracy theories like "#Pizzagate" to target the mainstream, aiming to "redpill" the public into adopting far-right, anti-establishment, and white nationalist ideologies. They acted as a decentralized engine to amplify “MAGA” ideas.

On Magyar’s part there were several parallel factors playing into his victory. 

An event that mobilized people occurred in Spring 2025, one year before the election. By that time Magyar’s Tisza party was already decisively ahead in the polls but Fidesz was having a slight recovery many envisioned as an inevitable comeback. At this point Orbán aimed to mobilize his supporters against groups he deemed the enemies of his rule. Part of this was his move against LGBTQ communities, and the full ban of the Pride parade, even threatening to fine anyone attending up to €500.

Initially, Magyar strategically distanced himself from the issue, deeming it a typical Fidesz tactic of creating a distraction from the important topics he concentrated on like the economy, healthcare, infrastructure, and education. He has also seen it as a ploy to detour his planned great walk to Transylvania, part of his larger campaign strategy of touring the countryside - another similarity to Trump: Magyar tirelessly and energetically visiting the country had a similar mobilizing effect on society as Trump’s rallies.

The Pride parade itself wasn’t really a concern for the vast majority of Hungarians. People mostly didn’t care, many in the opposition even had negative feelings towards it. In the previous years there were at most 35,000 participants. But the fact that the regime banned it triggered something deep. 

The event became an outlet, an excuse to protest against the government. Budapest’s left-wing mayor stood up for it and helped the Parade happen despite the ban, and it attracted a massive crowd of around 200,000 people. This was not only a record participation on any Pride parade in Hungary, but a record number in any anti-government protests since 1990.

This marked a decisive a shift in Orbán’s perceived power, something that seemed unthinkable in the past decade and a half. It made his opposition feel like they can actually resist him even going so far as doing something the government explicitly forbids.

The end of an era

In the last weeks of both the 2016 US and the 2026 Hungarian elections there was a perfect storm of events coming together that proved decisive.

To recap, at the end of the 2016 campaign the main stories after the infamous Access Hollywood tape (which at the time seemed like the case to decisively end Trump’s campaign) was the counter-action from WikiLeaks. With Russian help thousands of emails got leaked from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. This created a constant negative background noise around Clinton. Then as the final blow this has led to the reopening of a previous FBI investigation against her. These dominated media coverage leading up to election day, voters who were already uneasy about Clinton’s trustworthiness got constantly reminded of that.

In Hungary, what happened was much wilder to the point where even seasoned politics nerds and journalists got overwhelmed by the speed and amount of damaging material coming out against the government. Even by that point independent of each other; films, documentaries, and investigative articles started popping up, all challenging or criticising the regime in different ways. 

The last wave started with an attempted illegal secret service operation to frame Tisza party, to which they intended to use a regular police captain specialised in paedophilia cases. He refused to cooperate, and instead worked out the details of the situation, and turned to the press with it. He became an icon, a national hero overnight. This has led to a tsunami of people deciding to speak out publicly, emboldened by his bravery. 

This was the point where Fidesz completely and decisively lost control.

As a contribution to this, there were increasing leaks about Orbán’s foreign policy entanglement with Moscow. Telephone conversations surfaced where his foreign minister Péter Szijjártó talked to Sergey Lavrov in a subservient manner and tone, basically receiving instructions on what to do for them in Brussels. Then came another where Orbán had a conversation with Putin and likened himself to a mouse who helps the big lion as a token of gratitude for saving his life. These leaks likely originated from other European secret services carrying out surveillance on Moscow. But the true credit goes to independent journalists and news outlets that worked tirelessly in helping these come out.

Indeed, besides larger societal factors and external forces we cannot neglect mentioning the rise of talented experts and ideologically motivated people who were keen and motivated to help these movements reach the top. In the US to name a couple of the countless actors were Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon. Equally, in Hungary many similar people’s contribution, organisation, help, and advice was that led to Magyar’s success. In the US this was deeply ideological, in Hungary it was often beyond ideology, the collaboration of political actors from left to right.

What does this tell us about world politics and the point in history where we stand today?

The core difference between Péter Magyar and Donald Trump is their role in history. Trump embodies what Orbán represents in Hungary: far-right populism with the leader's core motive to gain and keep power and extract as much resource with that power as possible. Maximizing corruption with soft-core authoritarianism and aspirations of monarchism. Hungary is slightly ahead of the historical curve in this sense. Magyar is what comes after Trumpism (or Orbánism and Putinism). A man and movement that reinvents the system after a self-serving populist has captured it. 

From a different perspective, Orbán was still a classic “boring politician” figure from the pre social media age. Magyar is already part of the next wave of leaders, a bombastic Trumpian figure in this sense, unbothered by previous rules of what a politician should look and behave like.

His politics is a healthy mix of technocratic centrism with Trumpian communication style and an added benign populist rhetoric. He is similar to Giorgia Meloni in this regard, who is using far-right rhetoric while running a pragmatic a centre-right government. With a strong contrast from their divisive rhetoric that was pushed to the maximum by Orbán. Hungary has had enough of that, and thus Magyar is doing the opposite, trying to unite the country. The political pendulum often swings violently into the other direction. After radical division comes radical unifying.

Magyar and Meloni are great teachers for the European political class who want to skip the Trumpist-Orbánist wave. They show how using populism can prevent self-serving autocrats from taking power. 

We typically see decentralization in the 21st century as one of Europe’s great flaws on the world stage, but this is also one of its historical advantage over the rest of the world’s great powers and aspiring great powers. It is a diverse mix of countries with different governments, parties, policies, and solutions where other countries and systems can learn what works immediately next to them, thus self-correct to prevent colossal mistakes. This is one of Europe’s significant safeguards from large-scale authoritarian takeover.

Personal epilogue

The US is a strange place viewed from Europe. It’s everywhere in media, news, and products to the point where it feels like we know it very well. But in reality we don’t really grasp what’s truly happening on the ground. Following the Hungarian election campaign got me closer to understanding the reason why so many Americans voted for Trump. 

Sam Harris stood baffled by how tens of millions can support Trump, saying that he would not even leave a child in a room alone with Trump because nothing good could possibly come out of it. Yet people were ready to elevate him to the highest position on Earth. 

Magyar is nowhere near as bad of a human being as Trump. But he is very far from the politician archetypes of the “nice guy you could have a beer with”, or even the intellectual sort you’d love to spend time with discussing history, society, culture, or the state of the world. Orbán’s propaganda portrayed him as an aggressive narcissistic traitor who would be extremely dangerous as prime minister. While these are wildly exaggerated lies, he is definitely not someone most people would want to associate with in private life. 

To me, the narcissistic part makes sense. He gives off the vibe of the full-of-himself entitled rich kid you wouldn’t ever want to work under. But this didn’t matter because he used all the positive traits that come with narcissism - the self-confidence, ambition, charisma, and resilience - to fight against our common adversary. And all these just made him perfect for the task.

Although I struggled to understand the Trump phenomenon, I did wonder if I could vote for someone like him if they were running to represent my strongly held beliefs and ideas, and promised to fight for them. I always had an uncomfortable suspicion that I would. This election all but confirmed that. A voter whose house is burning will not care about who the firefighters are.

During the Hungarian election campaign many foreign observers were alarmed by the similar principles Péter Magyar and Viktor Orbán seemed to represent. Many were keen to doom post about how he will change nothing about Hungary’s foreign policy towards the EU and Russia.

It is true, he came from Orbán’s Fidesz party. He is conservative, and after starting to speak out against the regime he would often highlight the issues he agrees with Orbán on. His first interview where he entered public view was more an attempt to reform Fidesz from the inside than to take it down.

For those of us opposing the government for the full previous decade and a half he was not yet a convincing candidate exactly because of that. At that stage, him being Orbán 2.0 was a real possibility. But things have changed, his political positions have matured significantly and he is a very different person today than he was back then.

What he proved himself not to be is ideologically rigid. Today in Hungary, it is becoming increasingly toxic to be analogized to the previous regime. He ran not only for a change of government, but a change of the whole system. His rise was a peaceful revolution that is historically only comparable to the fall of communism in the country.

As he moved ahead with his campaign he increasingly began to distance himself from his original Fidesz roots, and built a unique political platform largely shaped by what Hungarians wanted from him. He built his base and ideology up from scratch in a way to unify the large and very diverse crowd that wanted to get rid of Orbán.

Since this is one of the few things that keeps his supporters together, he simply cannot become Orbán 2.0. He received a mandate to get rid of the past 16, even the past 24 or 36 years, and create something entirely different. His supporters are not loyal to him personally like Orbán’s voters. If he oversteps his mandate they will turn against him.

By Moscow clearly and even at points openly trying to help Orbán win and evidence surfacing that they're directly guiding Hungary’s foreign policy, one of the main slogans that was heard after the election results came in was “Ruszkik haza!” (“Russians go home!”) - echoing the Hungarian slogan from both 1956 and 1989. Magyar promised and got a very clear assignment from the people to distance the country from Russia and get closer again to the EU.

Even if he - despite all evidence for some mysterious reason - didn’t want to do this, there are systemic realities that will strongly push him in that direction. Hungary is deeply intertwined with the EU and its member states, and Magyar’s most important immediate foreign policy goal will be to unblock the nearly €20 billion frozen EU funds.

He couldn’t support Moscow and carry on with the fight against the EU while trying to access these funds. He is strongly incentivized to shift Hungary’s foreign policy. To get the job done his foreign minister will be a seasoned foreign policy expert called Anita Orbán (the name is a coincidence) who was sidelined by Fidesz years ago after the leadership started cosying up to Moscow. Even in 2008 she was well aware of the Russian threat, and wrote a book about the New Russian Imperialism.

How did Hungary arrive here?

To understand what is happening in Budapest we have to go back to before Orbán decisively took power in 2010. 

Between 2002-2010 the socialist MSZP was leading Hungary after the end of Orbán’s first government between 1998-2002. MSZP was the successor party of the previous communist one-party administration that ruled the country between 1956 and 1989. Their two terms in government were so bad it caused Orbán’s historic ⅔ majority in 2010. 

It was plagued by numerous gigantic scandals and their deeply incompetent handling of the Great Recession, and burned through three different prime ministers. The most distinctive among them who dominated this period was a man called Ferenc Gyurcsány who was prime minister between 2004 and 2009. By the end of his rule he became the most unpopular leader in modern Hungarian history, but as a politician he was utterly shameless, unwilling to accept total defeat and was hellbent on regaining power at all cost. 

In this pursuit, he pretty much destroyed the socialist party in the coming years while aiming to position himself as the leading opposition figure against Orbán. Since he was extremely unpopular and his potential return deeply frightened most people, Orbán was extremely happy to elevate Gyurcsány to this position even if his support had never merited it. He was merely one of the many opposition figures in an increasingly fragmented political palette against Fidesz.

In the 2010s Orbán’s evermore all-encompassing propaganda demonized him further, and constantly threatened that if Fidesz loses power, one way or another Gyurcsány will return. This propaganda machine managed to turn every election into a battle against Gyurcsány. The main underlying message was ”maybe we are not perfect, but if it’s not us, it will be him again.” With this strategy and the total redesigning of the election system to only favour him, Orbán managed to win every election for the next 16 years.

By the 2020s conspiracy theories started to spread that Gyurcsány is secretly working together with Orbán because him still being active in politics seemed to be the main reason for Orbán’s unending success. During his campaign Péter Magyar took advantage of these ideas, and put the two names together in his narrative. He positioned himself against both of them, and everyone who took part in this long-running dynamic that ran the country to the ground.

He is post-Orbán Hungary’s version of Donald Trump

There are some notable similarities on how and why the two men came to power, and even in some political and rhetorical style. This does not mean that Magyar represents similar values or going to govern the same way. Quite the opposite. 

Donald Trump in politics - despite his previous career - is not a builder, but a destroyer. He successfully identified that the United States electorate is unhappy with how the system works and its leading elite. The voters put him in the White House to serve as a hammer and smash the previous order by any means necessary.

A big part of why he can get away with almost anything and nothing can change his supporter’s mind about him is because he promises to fight for them and against their opposition. Hence, the “own the libs” meme. People are willing to excuse many things as long as he “owns” the “elite” they deem responsible for their perceived cultural marginalization, diminished status and loss of dignity. This is at the core of the similarities between Magyar and Trump. 

They both rose as part of the elite, but not really part of the immediate ruling class. Sort of an elite lite, an outsider on the inside who knew the system and held a grudge against the inner circle. This likely fuelled their determination to go against them and rise to the top while giving them credibility with the voters.

This is a big part of what makes them Teflon Politicians.*

Of course this is not the only reason. Similar to Trump, Magyar is giving off an unshakeable aura of confidence which makes him perceived as competent. During their campaigns they were both acting like unstoppable forces going against immovable objects. And they showed that in a fight like that the unstoppable force can smash the immovable object. 

They not only fight the system, but visibly enjoy doing it. They make fun of it, and love ”trolling” their opposition, who struggles to find a way to successfully counterattack them. One of Magyar’s dismissing catchphrase reaction to attacks from Fidesz propagandists and politicians was simply saying “Jó vergődést” ("Have fun struggling").

Both with the cases of Trump and Magyar there were serious internal and external forces that shaped their rise, only the sides were different. Trump’s rise received help from Russia, Magyar’s from Europe. 

Trump was helped by movements independent of him interested in wrecking the system, same with Magyar. Both men were like tanks, going forward no matter what, absorbing anything that hit them.

The big picture context

Both Trump and Magyar were surfers of larger societal waves they rode masterfully. Their movements are in a large part grassroot organizations that pushed forward on different levels for one ultimate goal: total regime change that could only be achieved by making sure the frontman is elevated into the high chair. This often happened without the two leader's direct influence.

In the case of Donald Trump there were unique segments of the internet mobilizing themselves. For example, parts of 4chan, particularly its "/pol/" (Politically Incorrect) and “/b/” (Random) boards played a key role in the 2016 election by organizing "memetic warfare" to support him and to disrupt Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

They created, spread, and mainstreamed pro-Trump memes, and disseminated conspiracy theories like "#Pizzagate" to target the mainstream, aiming to "redpill" the public into adopting far-right, anti-establishment, and white nationalist ideologies. They acted as a decentralized engine to amplify “MAGA” ideas.

On Magyar’s part there were several parallel factors playing into his victory. 

An event that mobilized people occurred in Spring 2025, one year before the election. By that time Magyar’s Tisza party was already decisively ahead in the polls but Fidesz was having a slight recovery many envisioned as an inevitable comeback. At this point Orbán aimed to mobilize his supporters against groups he deemed the enemies of his rule. Part of this was his move against LGBTQ communities, and the full ban of the Pride parade, even threatening to fine anyone attending up to €500.

Initially, Magyar strategically distanced himself from the issue, deeming it a typical Fidesz tactic of creating a distraction from the important topics he concentrated on like the economy, healthcare, infrastructure, and education. He has also seen it as a ploy to detour his planned great walk to Transylvania, part of his larger campaign strategy of touring the countryside - another similarity to Trump: Magyar tirelessly and energetically visiting the country had a similar mobilizing effect on society as Trump’s rallies.

The Pride parade itself wasn’t really a concern for the vast majority of Hungarians. People mostly didn’t care, many in the opposition even had negative feelings towards it. In the previous years there were at most 35,000 participants. But the fact that the regime banned it triggered something deep. 

The event became an outlet, an excuse to protest against the government. Budapest’s left-wing mayor stood up for it and helped the Parade happen despite the ban, and it attracted a massive crowd of around 200,000 people. This was not only a record participation on any Pride parade in Hungary, but a record number in any anti-government protests since 1990.

This marked a decisive a shift in Orbán’s perceived power, something that seemed unthinkable in the past decade and a half. It made his opposition feel like they can actually resist him even going so far as doing something the government explicitly forbids.

The end of an era

In the last weeks of both the 2016 US and the 2026 Hungarian elections there was a perfect storm of events coming together that proved decisive.

To recap, at the end of the 2016 campaign the main stories after the infamous Access Hollywood tape (which at the time seemed like the case to decisively end Trump’s campaign) was the counter-action from WikiLeaks. With Russian help thousands of emails got leaked from Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. This created a constant negative background noise around Clinton. Then as the final blow this has led to the reopening of a previous FBI investigation against her. These dominated media coverage leading up to election day, voters who were already uneasy about Clinton’s trustworthiness got constantly reminded of that.

In Hungary, what happened was much wilder to the point where even seasoned politics nerds and journalists got overwhelmed by the speed and amount of damaging material coming out against the government. Even by that point independent of each other; films, documentaries, and investigative articles started popping up, all challenging or criticising the regime in different ways. 

The last wave started with an attempted illegal secret service operation to frame Tisza party, to which they intended to use a regular police captain specialised in paedophilia cases. He refused to cooperate, and instead worked out the details of the situation, and turned to the press with it. He became an icon, a national hero overnight. This has led to a tsunami of people deciding to speak out publicly, emboldened by his bravery. 

This was the point where Fidesz completely and decisively lost control.

As a contribution to this, there were increasing leaks about Orbán’s foreign policy entanglement with Moscow. Telephone conversations surfaced where his foreign minister Péter Szijjártó talked to Sergey Lavrov in a subservient manner and tone, basically receiving instructions on what to do for them in Brussels. Then came another where Orbán had a conversation with Putin and likened himself to a mouse who helps the big lion as a token of gratitude for saving his life. These leaks likely originated from other European secret services carrying out surveillance on Moscow. But the true credit goes to independent journalists and news outlets that worked tirelessly in helping these come out.

Indeed, besides larger societal factors and external forces we cannot neglect mentioning the rise of talented experts and ideologically motivated people who were keen and motivated to help these movements reach the top. In the US to name a couple of the countless actors were Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon. Equally, in Hungary many similar people’s contribution, organisation, help, and advice was that led to Magyar’s success. In the US this was deeply ideological, in Hungary it was often beyond ideology, the collaboration of political actors from left to right.

What does this tell us about world politics and the point in history where we stand today?

The core difference between Péter Magyar and Donald Trump is their role in history. Trump embodies what Orbán represents in Hungary: far-right populism with the leader's core motive to gain and keep power and extract as much resource with that power as possible. Maximizing corruption with soft-core authoritarianism and aspirations of monarchism. Hungary is slightly ahead of the historical curve in this sense. Magyar is what comes after Trumpism (or Orbánism and Putinism). A man and movement that reinvents the system after a self-serving populist has captured it. 

From a different perspective, Orbán was still a classic “boring politician” figure from the pre social media age. Magyar is already part of the next wave of leaders, a bombastic Trumpian figure in this sense, unbothered by previous rules of what a politician should look and behave like.

His politics is a healthy mix of technocratic centrism with Trumpian communication style and an added benign populist rhetoric. He is similar to Giorgia Meloni in this regard, who is using far-right rhetoric while running a pragmatic a centre-right government. With a strong contrast from their divisive rhetoric that was pushed to the maximum by Orbán. Hungary has had enough of that, and thus Magyar is doing the opposite, trying to unite the country. The political pendulum often swings violently into the other direction. After radical division comes radical unifying.

Magyar and Meloni are great teachers for the European political class who want to skip the Trumpist-Orbánist wave. They show how using populism can prevent self-serving autocrats from taking power. 

We typically see decentralization in the 21st century as one of Europe’s great flaws on the world stage, but this is also one of its historical advantage over the rest of the world’s great powers and aspiring great powers. It is a diverse mix of countries with different governments, parties, policies, and solutions where other countries and systems can learn what works immediately next to them, thus self-correct to prevent colossal mistakes. This is one of Europe’s significant safeguards from large-scale authoritarian takeover.

Personal epilogue

The US is a strange place viewed from Europe. It’s everywhere in media, news, and products to the point where it feels like we know it very well. But in reality we don’t really grasp what’s truly happening on the ground. Following the Hungarian election campaign got me closer to understanding the reason why so many Americans voted for Trump. 

Sam Harris stood baffled by how tens of millions can support Trump, saying that he would not even leave a child in a room alone with Trump because nothing good could possibly come out of it. Yet people were ready to elevate him to the highest position on Earth. 

Magyar is nowhere near as bad of a human being as Trump. But he is very far from the politician archetypes of the “nice guy you could have a beer with”, or even the intellectual sort you’d love to spend time with discussing history, society, culture, or the state of the world. Orbán’s propaganda portrayed him as an aggressive narcissistic traitor who would be extremely dangerous as prime minister. While these are wildly exaggerated lies, he is definitely not someone most people would want to associate with in private life. 

To me, the narcissistic part makes sense. He gives off the vibe of the full-of-himself entitled rich kid you wouldn’t ever want to work under. But this didn’t matter because he used all the positive traits that come with narcissism - the self-confidence, ambition, charisma, and resilience - to fight against our common adversary. And all these just made him perfect for the task.

Although I struggled to understand the Trump phenomenon, I did wonder if I could vote for someone like him if they were running to represent my strongly held beliefs and ideas, and promised to fight for them. I always had an uncomfortable suspicion that I would. This election all but confirmed that. A voter whose house is burning will not care about who the firefighters are.