Hungary has placed the gas pipeline that straddles the Serbian border under military protection, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as accusations of a false-flag operation continued to swirl before a crunch election at the weekend and an official visit on Tuesday from the US vice-president, JD Vance.
Orbán travelled to Hungary’s southern border with Serbia on Monday, one day after Serbia said it had found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond.