An increasingly acrimonious spat between Hungary and Ukraine has escalated further, as Budapest impounded two Ukrainian armoured bank vehicles carrying millions of euros of hard cash as well as bars of gold.
Seven Ukrainian citizens accompanying the convoy were also arrested. Hungarian officials said the detained Ukrainians had intelligence links and suggested the money could be of dubious origin, while Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, accused Budapest of “taking hostages and stealing money”.
Sybiha also accused the pro-Russian Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, of cooking up the scandal for political gain, ahead of Hungarian elections next month.
Hungary’s national tax and customs administration said it had opened a money-laundering investigation over the shipment, which it said was made up of $40m and €35m in cash, as well as 9kg of gold. It said one of those arrested was “a former Ukrainian intelligence service general”.
Oschadbank, Ukraine’s state savings bank, said its staff were transporting cash and gold between between Austria and Ukraine in a “routine trip”, carried out by land because of restrictions on air travel in Ukraine.
But Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, cast doubt on the shipment: “Armoured vehicles full of cash and gold moving across Hungary is not how legitimate financial transactions usually work,” he wrote on X. “The real question is simple: who stands behind this money and what is it meant to finance?”
The seizure follows a dispute over gas supplies, in which Hungary and Slovakia have accused Kyiv of deliberately stalling on repairs to an oil pipeline after it was hit in an apparent Russian drone attack. In response, Orbán vetoed further EU sanctions on Russia as well as an additional €90bn loan for Ukraine.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy responded to the loan veto on Thursday with what sounded like a physical threat to Orbán. “We hope that one person in the European Union will not block the 90 bn Otherwise we will give this person’s address to our armed forces, to our guys. Let them call him and talk to him in their own language,” he said, in comments that caused shock in Budapest.
Ukrainian officials have accused Orbán of initiating the scandal for political gain ahead of a bitterly contested election next month. Recent surveys have suggested the opposition candidate Péter Magyar is set to win a resounding victory in next month’s vote, which would end 16 years of Orbán’s rule.
Orbán has ratcheted up the rhetoric on Ukraine, claiming that a victory for Magyar could see Hungary dragged into the war.
Hungarian analysts said Zelenskyy’s words played into Orbán’s hands and could help him in the polls. Robert Laszlo, from the Budapest thinktank Political Capital, said Zelenskyy’s threats could be enough to trigger the “war psychosis that the Hungarian government has been provoking for months” and to change the public mood.
“No one expected that it would be the Ukrainian president who would bring Viktor Orbán back into the game,” he said.
Zsuzsanna Végh, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund agreed: “Zelensky’s comments play into Orban’s hands. He was easily able to turn this into a threat against Hungary instead of a threat against him, thereby reinforcing his own narrative,” she said.
Magyar, who had been trying to avoid being directly drawn into the row over Ukraine, was forced to stand up for Orbán, apparently worried about losing ground over the issue.
“The Ukrainian president threatened prime minister Viktor Orbán. No foreign head of state can threaten a Hungarian or anyone else,” Magyar said during a political rally, adding that Zelenskyy could share his address with the Ukrainian military as well. Magyar called on the European Union to cut all ties with Ukraine until Zelenskyy apologised for his statement.
Hungarian officials said on Friday that the seven detained Ukrainians would be expelled from Hungary, but it was not immediately clear what would happen to the seized money and gold.
A lawyer for the detainees, Lóránt Horváth, told the news site 24.hu that he was trying to find his clients but had no information about where they were being held. “I don’t really know how to make sense of what is happening here, but it is not a normal procedure,” he said.
