Putin’s allies won elections in Serbia and Hungary

The two political leaders, who are the closest allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, scored a landslide victory in the April 3 elections. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban easily went on to win against a coalition of political opponents, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic won his second term with almost 60 per cent of the votes.

Although most of the EU and the world countries have condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine, these victories suggest that the peoples of those countries continue to support nationalist leaders who are closely associated with the Kremlin.

In the elections in Hungary and Serbia, it is estimated that right-wing parties in favor of Vladimir Putin strengthened their power with some new far-right allies, in part thanks to illiberal systems they built only for themselves.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic boasted of personal ties to Putin, met with him before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, boasted that he had reached important agreements with the Russian president and also discussed the last topic at their last meeting, the prices that are in Vucic’s favor because his visit to Russia was election-related.

Vucic, the candidate of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), but also the former Minister of Information in the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milosevic, also the current president of Serbia, won the first round of the presidential election with 58.65 percent of the vote, the Republican Election Commission announced.

The SNS convincingly won a majority of votes in the parliamentary elections, but for the first time does not have a majority in the Assembly, so it will form a coalition either with the current partners Socialist Party of Serbia and United Serbia or most likely with one of the minority parties , Union of Hungarians of Vojvodina. The opposition and independent observers cited a number of irregularities and incidents related to the vote, including violence.

On the same day, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who spent 12 years consolidating his power and clashing with the European Union over democratic values, won a fourth consecutive term in a convincing victory over a broad opposition alliance.

Orban, who called for peace in Ukraine, also used his victory speech to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “an opponent” of Hungary.

During his 12 years in power, Orban’s policy was often against European Union policy, as he increasingly turned his policy towards Putin and the Kremlin. He has built good ties with autocrats in recent years, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, rejecting the liberal-democratic principles of the West and the EU.

Orban’s Fidesz party has 135 seats in the Hungarian Parliament out of a total of 199, which will allow it to change any law, including the Constitution, without the support of the opposition. It can also encourage the prime minister in his battles with the EU.

On Saturday, in the run-up to Serbia’s April 3rd presidential and parliamentary elections, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban backed the Serbian president by opening the renovated Belgrade-Novi Sad high-speed railway, saying he would “do many more fantastic things” with Vucic.

As expected, Russian President Vladimir Putin was among the first world leaders to congratulate Vucic and Orban on winning the election. /TheGeopost/