In an interview with Politico Europe, Balázs Orbán, political director for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, revealed that Budapest would seek to reinvigorate the currently somewhat-defunct Visegrad Group, only this time as a union of three: Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Robert Fico’s Slovakia, and soon-to-be-Chancellor Andrej Babiš Czechia.
The loose grouping, formed after the fall of the communist bloc, originally was a four-party grouping of those three plus Poland. And while the grouping saw some success in acting as a bloc, particularly during 2015’s migrant crisis, it fractured and frayed amid the expanded Russo-Ukrainian War, with Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia (the latter relatively briefly) all vigorously supporting Ukraine and Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.
Now, Hungary is not so lonely. Slovakia has been governed by Ukraine-skeptic Fico since 2023, and the Czechs just gave an overwhelming victory to Babiš, also a Ukraine skeptic.
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