hungary

For almost 15 years, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been a fixture of EU politics, while leading a populist onslaught against liberalism at home. But even as Orban attracts fawning admiration from other anti-liberal populists in Europe and the United States, cracks are beginning to show in his own power base in Hungary.

Hungarian Prime Minister Orban’s capitulation in his standoff with the EU over aid to Ukraine revealed the extent to which his embrace of anti-liberal culture wars is a tactical gambit he is willing to ditch whenever it is necessary to protect EU handouts that fund the corrupt patronage networks on which his regime relies.