Then prime minister Peter Pellegrini (left) was supposed to ask Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán (right) to get him in touch with Russia during an inspection of measures against illegal migration in February 2020. (source: TASR)
Ahead of the early elections in 2020, then prime minister and leader of the Smer party's slate, Peter Pellegrini, asked Hungary's PM Viktor Orbán to get him in touch with Moscow.
Allegedly, the reason was the decreasing support for Smer due to mass protests after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kušnírová, reports the news website Aktuality, citing the Ján Kuciak Investigative Journalism Centre (ICJK). Pellegrini believed that the visit would have increased Smer's chances of winning.
Today, Pellegrini serves as speaker of parliament, and is running in the approaching presidential election. The first round will be held on Saturday.
The ICJK writes that even though Pellegrini did travel to Russia, his meeting with Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin did not amount to anything. Smer lost the snap election.
Orbán served as an intermediary. The Hungarian government is known for its ties with the Kremlin. "The Slovak prime minister explained to the Hungarian prime minister that the invitation to Moscow is much more important to him than visiting the White House," writes the centre. Orbán and Pellegrini discussed the matter at the Hungarian-Serbian border when they came to see a fence built to stop illegal migration. Subsequently, Orbán asked his Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó to deliver the message to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who then forwarded the request to Mishustin.
According to the ICJK, the information was provided to the centre by journalists from the VSquare project. The findings are based on sensitive intelligence from an unknown European country from February 2020.
"According to the intel, Hungarian and Russian officials discussed the fact that the Slovak opposition is under foreign influence and allegedly financed by the Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
The Hungarians also suggested that Andrej Danko's nationalist SNS party making it into the Slovak parliament as well was in their interest," the ICJK writes. Danko holds pro-Russian views. The SNS party won no seats in the 2020 elections, Smer coming second.
Pellegrini and Orbán also met in Budapest on March 11, 2024, just two weeks before the first round of the presidential elections.
In 2019, Pellegrini met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
