After Orbán: a lesson for Slovakia and all “beginner autocrats”

The fall of Viktor Orbán is not a story about how “external forces” broke yet another sovereign leader. It is a story about how a regime that lived for too long off the monopolization of the state eventually ran up against its own limits. Orbán’s defeat is closely tied to 16 years in power, economic stagnation, problems in healthcare, inflation, tensions with the EU over democratic standards, and growing public fatigue with so-called illiberal democracy. It is particularly telling that Fidesz failed among young voters: Orbán’s support in the 18–29 age group dropped sharply, and high turnout became the decisive factor. This is the key signal for Slovakia: “tightening the screws” works only as long as a regime can buy loyalty through relative economic stability. Once the sense of a future disappears, populism can no longer compensate for fatigue with monopoly rule.

The second lesson for Robert Fico is even more unpleasant. Orbán was not broken by a classic opposition figure “from the street,” but by Péter Magyar — a man who came out of the Fidesz system itself and knew it from the inside. A former insider of the ruling elite who turned knowledge of internal corruption and the mechanics of propaganda into a political weapon. That is where the real danger lies for any personalist regime: it usually does not collapse when the opposition is shouting, but when part of the former nomenklatura begins to speak the language of public fatigue. For Fico, this is a red flag. It is impossible to rely indefinitely only on anti-European rhetoric, a controlled information environment, and accusations against external enemies. Sooner or later, his own Magyar will appear — a figure who will convert the fatigue of the middle class, young people, and part of the state apparatus into a political verdict.

But Orbán’s defeat does not mean an automatic break with Moscow. This is perhaps the most important point of sobriety. Under Orbán, Hungary did not merely take pro-Russian positions rhetorically; it preserved real dependence on Russian energy resources, opposed a ban on Russian supplies, blocked EU decisions regarding Ukraine, and Russia continues to build a new nuclear power plant in the country. After Magyar’s victory, the Kremlin already made clear that it expects “pragmatic” relations with the new government. Even the new Slovak-Hungarian communication continues to focus on “energy security.” So there will be no quick “disconnection” from the Russian sphere: contracts, infrastructure, and the energy architecture do not break apart overnight. The new government will face a tough choice between a rapid geopolitical shift and the risk of economic shock.

This is precisely where the Kremlin’s shadow begins — not as an abstraction, but as a political environment of pressure. At least one thing has already been publicly documented: ahead of the elections, pro-Orbán messages on Telegram were spread in a coordinated manner, and certain studies identified significant amplification of these narratives by Russian or Russia-linked sources. This does not automatically justify claims of a specific GRU operation in the legal sense, but it does provide sufficient grounds to say that Orbán’s campaign existed in an environment where Kremlin information interests were working to its benefit. Another symptom adds to this: recordings appeared in the public sphere in which the Hungarian foreign minister proposed handing over to the Russian side a document concerning Ukraine’s European integration. Taken together, this does not amount to conspiracy theory, but to a very bad picture of political and informational proximity to Moscow. There is no public evidence of any specific “kompromat archive” on Magyar, but the risk that Russian influence networks will seek leverage over the new prime minister is already obvious from the very configuration of the inheritance he is receiving.

A separate dimension of this campaign was the use of social media as an instrument of fear, manipulation, and technologically enhanced disinformation. Orbán’s campaign did not function only through classical propaganda, but also through digital mechanisms of mass narrative imposition: the pre-election “40-day digital challenge,” the network of so-called digital fighters and digital civic circles, designed to amplify government messages online on a daily basis. At the same time, Vox Harbor research documented the coordinated spread of pro-Orbán messages via Telegram, from where these narratives then moved into the broader space of Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms. In other words, this was not spontaneous support, but a built ecosystem of digital influence, in which fear of Ukraine, “war,” the EU, and a change of power was systematically packaged into viral content.

Even more troubling is the fact that artificial intelligence tools were also used within this ecosystem. In February 2026, the Fidesz party distributed an election video featuring an AI-generated execution-by-firing-squad scene intended to visually reinforce Orbán’s main message: that an opposition victory would allegedly drag Hungary into the war in Ukraine. Google AI tools were used to create this video. Earlier, in October 2025, Péter Magyar announced his intention to file a criminal complaint over another likely deepfake video shared on Facebook by Orbán ally Balázs Orbán, in which he was falsely attributed statements about cutting pensions. This means that the regime’s digital campaign relied not merely on political agitation, but on an increasingly aggressive mixture of propaganda, synthetic content, emotional blackmail, and technological deception. For Slovakia, this is a separate signal: a modern semi-authoritarian regime destroys democracy today not only through capturing institutions, but also through fabricating reality itself on social media.

And yet the most difficult challenge for Magyar is not Moscow, but the Hungarian state itself, which Orbán spent years transforming into a system of loyalties. Over 16 years, Fidesz rewrote the constitution, changed hundreds of laws, redesigned the electoral rules, placed its own people in key positions, and from 2022 often governed the country by decree under a state of emergency. To this one must add control over the media environment, the transformation of state media into a pro-government mouthpiece, and the fact that Orbán loyalists remained in key institutions. Winning the election, therefore, is only the beginning. Governing the country after Orbán means not merely sitting in government chairs, but dismantling the Fidesz “deep state,” which is embedded in norms, procedures, regulators, state-owned companies, the information space, and кадровые appointments. And this is precisely where the trap lies for Magyar: dismantling a mafia-like institutional structure will inevitably look to Orbánists like a “liberal dictatorship,” even if in substance it is about restoring normal statehood.

Brussels, for its part, will undoubtedly welcome Hungary’s return to a more rational European line. But that does not mean the EU will immediately open the safe. Tisza’s victory has already created expectations of frozen funds being released, but European capitals understand very well that reforms must be real, not cosmetic. At stake are at least billions of euros tied to rule-of-law problems, as well as a broader pool of frozen resources whose return will be gradual and strictly linked to results. Brussels’ logic is simple: changing the prime minister’s name is not yet a change of regime. There is a lesson here for Slovakia as well. The EU may tolerate a government’s toxic behavior for a long time, but money, rules, and procedures ultimately become levers that strike at the very foundation of the regime model.

The outcome should not be romanticized for Ukraine either. Magyar does not look like a person who will tomorrow turn Budapest into Kyiv’s advocate in everything. His political profile so far points rather to a pro-European reformer who wants to restore trust in the EU, but who also shows caution toward Ukraine, does not promise military support, and does not advocate its rapid EU membership. So for Kyiv, this is not about a future “best friend,” but rather about a chance to end systematic sabotage. The main change may lie not in love for Ukraine, but in the fact that Hungary may cease to be the European Union’s professional troll and constant blocker of common decisions. Open hostility may give way to dry pragmatism — and for today’s Europe, that is already a great deal.

This leads to the main conclusion for Slovakia. One should not think that the Slovak voter is doomed forever to swallow the same cocktail of populism, anti-European resentment, energy blackmail, and corruption. Orbán’s story showed that even a deeply entrenched regime with controlled media, rewritten rules, and extensive ties to Moscow remains vulnerable to one banal fact: society gets tired. It gets tired of the state turning into a private machine of power and of foreign policy becoming an instrument of the ruling group’s personal survival. For all “beginner autocrats” in Bratislava, this sounds like a warning: there is no eternal monopoly if your model rests on fear, the degradation of institutions, and the justification of your own corruption through a “struggle for sovereignty.” Hungary has already shown how that ends.