Far-right influencer from Serbia in 'Russian network' of Orban promoters

An influential far-right figure from Serbia has supported current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the election campaign ahead of the parliamentary elections.

Mario Bojic, who spreads conspiracy theories and pro-Russian propaganda on his YouTube channel, which has around 130,000 followers, made a report from Budapest in which he presented Orban as Europe's defender from "Islamic terrorists" and labeled opposition candidate Peter Magyar as a puppet of the European Union.

"His support for Orban suggests that Bojic may be part of a network of influencers and journalists organized by the Kremlin to support the current Hungarian prime minister," Bulcsu Hunyadi of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute told Radio Free Europe.

Bojić did not respond to the invitation. Radio Free Europe to be interviewed for this article.

Orban's Fidesz party has been in power in this European Union member state since 2010, and ahead of the April 12 election, pre-election polls give an advantage to the opposition TISA party led by Peter Magyar.

The current prime minister is a close partner of the Russian Federation, even after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and American media recently published a series of articles about the ties of Russian secret services to senior Hungarian officials.

Orban's party did not respond to Radio Free Europe's request for comment on the support they received from the Serbian influencer.

What did Bojic say?

Mario Bojić published the hour-long video report on his YouTube channel “Mario Zna.” The channel has nearly 130,000 followers and more than 30 million views since its founding.

The video, titled "I went to Budapest to see why the EU, (American billionaire and philanthropist George) Soros and (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky are desperate to overthrow Orban," was viewed by 13,000 people in three weeks.

In it, Bojic claims that "the West wants to overthrow Viktor Orban and start ruling here, just as it rules in Germany and France."

“Don’t think that they won’t try to do everything they can to achieve their goals and hinder Hungary’s prosperity, to drag Hungary into wars, so that the Hungarian government can finance wars and abandon the peace policy it is currently pursuing,” says Bojic.

As he says, with Orban gone, "Budapest would become a city full of immigrants from third world countries."

In one segment of the video, Mario Bojic walks along Vaci Street, one of the main shopping and pedestrian areas in the Hungarian capital. As he walks, he invites viewers to pay attention to whether there are any migrants from the Middle East and Africa among the passersby.

"God, there are so many white people here. You see, everything can be normal," says Bojic.

Standing in front of St. Stephen's Basilica, Bojic speaks of Hungary as a country where Christianity is blocked by "mental illness," by which he means homosexuality.

Although he did not mention opposition candidate Peter Magar by name, Bojic labeled him a "drug addict" supported by the European Union and billionaire George Soros.

The scandal Bojic is talking about was published by pro-government Hungarian media. Footage of a bedroom in an apartment where a party was held in 2024, which, according to his admission, also included a Hungarian, was made public.

The footage also shows a table with alcohol and a substance that appears to be drugs. The Hungarian denied having consumed drugs and voluntarily submitted to a drug test at an accredited laboratory in Vienna. As of the end of March 2026, no positive results had been published and no criminal charges had been brought against him for drugs.

Russian narrative

Budapest-based journalist Miklós Barna Lipkovski says the narrative spread by Mario Bojić is identical to that presented by Orbán's Fidesz, as well as other right-wing European parties close to the Kremlin.

“Currently, the Fidesz narrative focuses on how the evil Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Brussels want to destroy Hungary. In the previous elections, the main topic was gender politics and the anti-LGBT narrative, and before that, anti-migrant politics. This influencer got a little bit of all of that,” says Barna Lipkovski and underlines:

“This is a purely Russian story.”

The current prime minister of Hungary, whose right-wing government opposes the EU's policy of providing military aid to Ukraine against the Russian invasion and maintains good relations with the Kremlin, has repeatedly accused NGOs, journalists and individual politicians of being "mercenaries" of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and billionaire George Soros.

Miklos Barna Lipkovsky says that in Fidesz's pre-election narrative, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the European Union today play the role that migrants and refugees had two election cycles ago.

"These are 'cowards' who distract attention from the daily problems of voters. Hungary is currently one of the poorest countries in the EU. We have one of the smallest GDPs in the EU," says Barna Lipkovski.

According to 2024 statistics, Hungary ranks 23rd out of 27 EU countries in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Only Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Latvia rank worse.

The Russian network of Orban promoters

Bulcs Hunyadi of the Budapest-based Political Capital Institute tells Radio Free Europe that Hungary's right-wing ruling party has previously received support from ideologically close actors, ranging from state officials to influential figures.

According to him, it is an "international network of media outlets and individuals" who are pro-Russian and maintain ties to Russian structures.

"We have seen many reports that the Kremlin is organizing networks of influencers and journalists in Europe. Based on all the available information about Mario Bojic and his ties to Russia, there is a suspicion that he is part of this pro-Russian network," Hunyadji believes.

The American newspaper "Washington Post" wrote about the systematic collusion of Russian intelligence services with Hungarian authorities in March 2026. According to this newspaper, Hungarian officials have for years provided Russian intelligence services with a privileged channel in sensitive discussions within the EU.

In a separate article, the Washington Post reported that Russian intelligence services were considering covert actions to influence the parliamentary elections in Hungary in 2026. One idea was to stage a fake assassination attempt on Viktor Orban, with the aim of gaining voter sympathy and halting Orban's decline in popularity.

Most independent opinion polls from March 2026 show the opposition Party of Respect and Freedom (TISA) with a double-digit lead over Orbán's Fidesz.

In March 2025, Bojić hosted Chay Bowes, an Irish businessman and journalist for RT (formerly Russia Today), in his studio. The European Union banned the broadcaster from broadcasting in the EU four years ago for spreading disinformation and manipulating information.

Bowes was in Serbia at the height of mass anti-government protests and student blockades, which were sparked by the deaths of 16 people in a building canopy collapse in Novi Sad.

During his stay in Serbia, he filmed a documentary about the West's alleged financial influence on the "color revolution," a term used by the Kremlin to describe the overthrow of authoritarian regimes in former Soviet republics.

How did it start?

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Bojić positioned himself as one of the most vocal anti-vaccinators in Serbia. He became active on his YouTube channel “Mario Zna”, where he spread misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines.

Vesna Radojević, editor of "Raskrikavanje", says that the content that Bojić and conspiracy theorists like him spread "thrives" in times of crisis.

“The pandemic was a real boom for them because they gathered an audience for anti-vaccination content then, and they continue to insist on that,” says Radojevic.

In late 2020, Bojić registered the Agency for Television Program Production “Pika Zero” based in Kragujevac in central Serbia. According to publicly available data, this company has had more than 50 temporary interruptions so far.

“Zero Pika” is also a website where Bojić posts shows from his YouTube channel. The site’s slogan is “We are bringing objectivity back to journalism.” However, it publishes unverified and inaccurate news with sensationalist headlines every day.

Bojić is also aided by algorithms that, according to Vesna Radojević, flood users with such content.

“Platforms like YouTube and Facebook don’t reward accuracy, they reward clicks, time spent on the platform, emotional reactions. And conspiracy content has all of that in abundance. YouTube is one of the main machines for radicalizing audiences, promoting conspiracy theorists, pushing that content,” says the editor of “Raskrivanje.”

Among the topics that Mario Bojic pushes forward is the conspiracy theory of "population replacement", according to which there is a plan organized by political elites to "replace" the population of a country with other ethnic or religious groups.

In January 2026, he published interviews with representatives of far-right groups and parties from Austria and Germany. One of his interlocutors was Austrian far-right figure Martin Sellner – who had previously been banned from entering the UK, Switzerland and the US due to his extremist views.

In that article, Bojić claims that Vienna is today "hostage to the European Union's grand experiment in demographic replacement" carried out by shadowy elites.

This unfounded theory is a global trend, but it is not at all harmless, warns Vesna Radojević.

"The manifesto of the New Zealand terrorist who killed 51 people in 2019 clearly referred to the 'Great Exchange'. So this theory directly influences the emergence of violence against migrants, Muslims and even the emergence of mass murders. People like Bojić are not interested in this, what matters to them is the clique, not the public interest," says Vesna Radojević.

Incidentally, besides Mario Bojić, among the main promoters of this conspiracy theory in Serbia is the informal ultra-right group “People’s Patrol”. The leader of this group, Damjan Knezević, participated in the conference of the International League of Anti-Globalists “Paladins” in St. Petersburg in September 2025.

The rally, which brought together representatives of dozens of far-right parties and movements from around the world, was organized by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, who is under sanctions by Western countries, and the main topic was the fight against the arrival of migrants.