Exclusive: Orbán challenger Magyar says election is a 'referendum' on Hungary's place in the world

KISKUNHALAS, Hungary (AP) — Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar says a crucial election next week where he's facing pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán will be a “referendum” on whether Hungary continues on its drift toward Eastern autocracies, or can retake its place among the democratic societies of Europe.

Magyar, once an Orbán ally, poses the most serious threat to the nationalist prime minister's hold on power since he took office in 2010.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Magyar said the European Union's longest-serving leader has led the country on a “180-degree turn” in recent years, endangering its Western orientation while cozying up to Moscow.

Yet despite that drift, “Hungarians still see that Hungary’s peace and development are guaranteed by membership of the European Union and NATO,” Magyar said. “I think this really will be a referendum on our country's place in the world.”

Magyar spoke to the AP on Thursday following an election rally by his center-right Tisza party in Kiskunhalas, a small city of around 25,000 on Hungary's southern great plain. It was one of hundreds of rallies he's held in settlements big and small across the country, a campaign blitz that has him visiting up to six towns a day ahead of the April 12 election.

Orbán has gained a reputation as an inveterate disruptor within the EU for his frequent vetoes of important decisions. He has campaigned by sounding the alarm on a myriad of external dangers he says are threatening Hungarians — the war in Ukraine, a cabal of EU bureaucrats and financial elites aligned against Hungary, and an immigration crisis ever on the horizon.

Magyar, who is leading in most polls, has focused on issues that affect voters' everyday lives, like Hungary’s faltering state health care and public transportation sectors and what he describes as rampant government corruption.

At each of his rallies, he charges Orbán and his nationalist-populist Fidesz party with making Hungary the “poorest and most corrupt” country in the EU — and depicts a “peaceful, humane and functioning” country that is within reach.

Yet alongside that domestic message, Magyar has increasingly portrayed Orbán’s brinksmanship with the EU, and his drift toward Russia, as matters of critical importance for the country’s future.

“I think that Tisza will have an overwhelming electoral victory, because even Fidesz voters do not want our country to be a Russian puppet state, a colony, an assembly plant, instead of belonging to Europe,” he said.

Magyar and his party's meteoric rise caught many Hungarians by surprise. For nearly a decade and a half, a broad slate of fractured opposition parties had tried and failed to mount a serious threat to Orbán's hold on power.

While opposition politicians often slammed Orbán during debates in parliament, they rarely made efforts to win over his base of support in the rural countryside. Frustrated after a string of bitter losses, many opposition voters descended into political apathy.

Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer and former Fidesz insider, was previously married to an Orbán ally who served as Hungary’s justice minister. After working for several years as a diplomat in Brussels, he returned to Hungary and took positions in state institutions, gaining familiarity with the workings of Orbán's system.

But then, in the wake of a political scandal in 2024 involving a presidential pardon to an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case, Magyar publicly broke with Orbán's party, accusing it of overseeing entrenched corruption and capturing Hungary's institutions.

He quickly founded the center-right Tisza party — named for Hungary's second-largest river — which, only four months after Magyar's break into electoral politics, won 30% of the vote in European Parliament elections.

As Tisza's popularity grew, a chant heard at its rallies became a motto for its rise: “The Tisza is flooding.”

While Magyar has cast his task in the election as dismantling Orbán's autocratic system, he has promised to keep some of the prime minister's policies he views as positive, such as a fence along the southern border to keep out migrants, and a popular utility reduction program.

Still, his party — a member of the European Parliament's largest, center-right group — diverges from the constellation of far-right political movements in Europe and beyond that view Orbán as a shining example of nationalist populism in action.

In a sign of U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA movement's admiration for Orbán, Vice President JD Vance is set to visit Budapest on Tuesday in support of his reelection.

Many EU leaders are watching Hungary's election in the hopes that Orbán will be defeated.

His frequent vetoes — which most recently included blocking a major, 90-bill euro ($104-billion) EU loan for Ukraine — have often been to please his euroskeptic base, Magyar said, “vetoing just to veto so he can say at home that he is vetoing.”

The prime minister's conduct has led to renewed calls within the EU to reform the bloc’s foundational treaties by reducing the number of decisions that require unanimity — a way to buttress against the paralysis that can be caused by intransigent member states.

Magyar said that under a Tisza government, European leaders can expect a “constructive position,” but one that is “critical and willing to debate. We want to be there at the table.”

Despite Orbán's exploitation of the EU's unanimity rules, the ability to veto important decisions is a “valid option,” he continued, adding: “I think the European leaders have no problem with this, they have a problem with the unnecessary troublemaker role.”

“The task of a Hungarian prime minister at any given time is to represent Hungarian interests, and if necessary, to represent them forcefully,” he said. “Whatever it costs.”

Orbán has confounded, and even angered, nearly every other EU leader with his conciliatory approach to Russia and closeness to President Vladimir Putin. Some EU officials, and many of his opponents at home, have accused him of forsaking his commitments to the bloc on Moscow’s behalf.

As nearly every EU country cut off supplies of Russian fossil fuels following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Hungary, along with Slovakia, maintained and even increased supplies — drawing ire from many countries who accused them of helping finance the war.

While Magyar has condemned Hungary's drift toward Moscow, as well as reports that Russian secret services are meddling in the election to tip it in Orbán's favor, he said his future government will pursue a “pragmatic” approach toward Russia.

“Pragmatism means that we have no say in Russia’s internal affairs, and they don’t have any say in our affairs,” he said. “We are both sovereign countries, and we respect each other, but we don’t have to like each other.”

Magyar has criticized Orbán's government for failing to diversify its energy mix, and advocated for reaching new agreements and constructing new infrastructure to bring oil and gas from other sources into landlocked Hungary.

Still, he said, “this does not mean that we must stop using Russian oil tomorrow. It means that the European Union’s resources must be used well.”

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar addresses people during an election rally in Kiskunhalas, Hungary, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar addresses people during an election rally in Kiskunhalas, Hungary, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Kiskunhalas, Hungary. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

Hungarian opposition leader Peter Magyar speaks during an interview with the Associated Press, Thursday, April 2, 2026, in Kiskunhalas, Hungary. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran on Tuesday denounced the most recent U.S. strikes as a sign of “bad faith and unreliability” as negotiations pressed on toward a possible deal to end the war, and the Islamic Republic began restoring internet access after one of the longest nationwide shutdowns ever.

The U.S. military characterized Monday's strikes in southern Iran as defensive, saying targets included missile launch sites and minelaying boats, and said the U.S. acted with “restraint" in light of the weekslong ceasefire.

Iran's foreign ministry called the strikes a ceasefire violation and warned that Washington would bear responsibility for “all consequences,” without elaborating.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will leave no act of aggression unanswered,” it added in a statement.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said Tuesday that it shot down at least one drone and deterred another drone and a fighter jet that entered its airspace, according to Iran’s official Mizan news agency. It didn't specify when the incidents occurred.

Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, used a statement about Islam's annual Hajj pilgrimage to address his country's confrontation with the U.S. and Israel, declaring that other Mideast nations “will no longer serve as a shield” for U.S. military bases. Iran has previously complained about U.S. military facilities in the region and targeted them.

It was not immediately clear what the developments would mean for negotiations.

Iranian state TV reported Tuesday that Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left Qatar, where talks had been taking place. The report did not elaborate or point to any next steps. In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio projected that talks on extending the ceasefire and reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz will “take a few days."

Meanwhile, Iranian authorities eased a monthslong internet shutdown that they cast as a wartime necessity, but that has cost the country's economy an estimated $30 million to $40 million a day. Internet users reported that access was gradually being restored, at least in some places. State media reported that fixed broadband service was partially restored. Mobile internet wasn't yet working.

Iran has long enforced filters and policed content on platforms such as YouTube and Instagram. But before the war, Iranians could bypass restrictions with cheap virtual private networks, known as VPNs, and other easy workarounds.

Authorities cut off internet access in January during massive anti-government demonstrations and later began to relax those restrictions before imposing a complete internet blackout after the U.S. and Israel attacked on Feb. 28.

The internet outage made it difficult for Iranians outside the country to maintain contact with loved ones, and the lack of connectivity devastated the country’s relatively vibrant online businesses, putting further pressure on an already battered economy.

In other developments, Iran hanged a man it convicted of spying for Israel, the latest of more than two dozen allegedly espionage- and security-related executions since the war intensified a crackdown on dissent.

The Iranian judiciary’s news outlet, Mizanonline, identified the man as Gholamreza Khani Shakarab, calling him “a ringleader” for operations for Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, and accusing him of recruiting members inside and outside Iran to work against the nation’s security. He was involved in sports and traveled to neighboring countries, according to the news agency.

Activists and rights groups say Iran routinely holds closed-door trials in which defendants are unable to challenge accusations and often are forced to confess.

The official judiciary agency said the country’s Supreme Court had upheld Shakarab's death sentence.

The U.S. strikes were the latest flare-up in the fragile ceasefire that began April 7 and has largely held.

Negotiations center in part on the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial waterway off southern Iran through which a fifth of the world's crude oil and natural gas passed before the war began. Once the fighting started, Tehran retaliated by effectively closing the strait, stranding hundreds of ships, shocking the global economy, disrupting energy markets and squeezing fertilizer supplies worldwide.

The full effect of the fertilizer crunch might not become clear until harvests that are months away. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Qu Dongyu, warned Tuesday at an event in Rome that “the decisions we make now will determine whether this remains a manageable shock or evolves into a deeper global food security crisis in 2026 and 2027 and beyond."

The strait has become a powerful lever for Tehran in talks, joining the long-running issue of Iran's nuclear program and its highly enriched uranium. Iran wants the U.S. to lift its military blockade of Iranian ports that began on April 17.

In the nearby Gulf of Oman, an explosion was reported Tuesday aboard a tanker, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Center. No one was injured, and there was no immediate information on the cause.

A woman crosses a street in front of a painting of the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini and paramilitary Basij forces in downtown Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Government supporters hold Iranian flags and pictures of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, during a ceremony honoring the armed forces and those killed in the war with Israel and the U.S. at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosque in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

President Donald Trump speaks during the 158th National Memorial Day Observance coinciding with the nation's 250th anniversary, at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery, Monday, May 25, 2026, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)