\nBecome a supporting member now!<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n
KNBSZ director general Janos Beres responded to our request by saying that he has no authority to make comments. Hungary\u2019s Ministry of Defence, overseeing KNBSZ, did not respond to our multiple inquiries at all.<\/p>\n
Quiet expulsions<\/strong><\/h3>\nOn December 1, 2016, the Hungarian Military National Security Service (KNBSZ)\u00a0informed\u00a0members of parliament about\u00a0the\u00a0exposure of\u00a0the\u00a0GRU intelligence\u00a0officer while presenting its annual report<\/a> before the National Security Committee of the Hungarian Parliament.\u00a0This committee is the only non-governmental forum that has power, albeit limited, to hold secret services accountable. The MPs were impressed with the detailed presentation on the operation. One of them, opposition MP Bernadett Szel said that \u201eit was a very powerful presentation\u201d.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/ill1.jpg\")
Closed hearing of the National Security Committee<\/p><\/div>\n
Asking for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, two sources familiar with the work of the committee told us that the December 2016 meeting was the last time that Hungarian secret services reported having exposed and quietly expelled Russian spies from Hungary. During the Orban governments \u2013 since 2010 \u2013, approximately ten similar cases (including this one) was mentioned before the committee.<\/p>\n
With quiet expulsions, first the domestic security services somehow expose the foreign intelligence officer, then the spy leaves the country for good either at the command of his or her superiors, or at the strong request of the host country\u2019s counter-intelligence. In such cases, the spy affair is not formally recognized at a diplomatic level, although the foreign ministries of the two countries may receive a confidential briefing about the events. An essential element of quiet expulsions (as the name suggests) is that these cases are not disclosed to the public. This is the reason why Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto said that no Russian diplomats were expelled from Hungary when Hungarian news site Index asked him in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\nWhat makes the Hungarian practice strange compared to other countries of the former Eastern bloc is that there are no official expulsions, only quiet ones. A Hungarian source from the national security committee said that quiet expulsions \u201ecould be painful, too\u201d, but this is also a way for the Hungarian government to avoid an open confrontation with Moscow. However, only in recent weeks has the nabbing of several Russian spies been made public in other countries of the region.\u00a0In November, Austria announced<\/a> that one of the colonels of the Austrian army had been selling military secrets to Russia since the ’90s.\u00a0A few weeks later, Slovakia expelled a Russian diplomat<\/a> \u2013 an undercover GRU agent \u2013 who had been spying against Slovakia and NATO.\u00a0At the beginning of December, Czech counter-intelligence announced<\/a> that they had, also through quiet expulsions, exposed a Russian spy network earlier during the year and completely paralyzed their activities.\u00a0Poland and the Baltic states are catching Russian spies (both military and civilian spies) much more frequently and are proud to inform the public.<\/p>\nSince 2010, the only official expulsion in Hungary took place in the spring of 2018, when, responding to the Skripal poisoning, Budapest joined the UK\u2019s initiative and expelled a GRU-affiliated Russian diplomat.\u00a0However, Direkt36 found out about this rare incident<\/a> that in reality Budapest and Moscow\u00a0colluded in\u00a0the background and conducted the mutual bans of each other’s diplomats in a way to cause the least possible damage to Russian-Hungarian relations.\u00a0The Russian diplomat chosen to be expelled from Hungary was about to complete his posting and was already preparing to go home.<\/p>\nThe quiet Hungarian expulsions typically have the disadvantage that silence can even embolden Russian spying activity.\u00a0“Why does Russian intelligence love Budapest so much?\u00a0That is because the risk here is the lowest if they make mistakes or get exposed.\u00a0Russia’s prestige will not be hurt because the Hungarian government keeps everything under the table, and quiet expulsions are a good example of that\u201d, Andras Racz, Political Capital Institute\u2019s expert on security issues told Direkt36.\u00a0According to Racz, however, there is a very important difference between the attitudes of the Hungarian security community and the Hungarian political leadership towards the threat posed by Russian intelligence.\u00a0Besides Racz, numerous sources dealing with national security issues on different levels agreed unanimously while talking with Direkt36 that the KNBSZ is doing a serious job of tackling Russian intelligence. However, it is always up to the narrow political elite to decide how spying affairs should be handled on a diplomatic level and in public.<\/p>\n
The operation of 2016, as well as the previous other unofficial and secret expulsions, seem to contradict the Kremlin-friendly foreign policy of the Orban government.\u00a0Based on our background conversations regarding the topic, these operations were largely not initiated by the Hungarian government.\u00a0KNBSZ\u2019s leadership (director general Jozsef Kovacs and his successor, Janos Beres) and staff are committed to Western values \u200band the Western alliance system, both professionally and in personal worldview.\u00a0Many of them participated in rotations of NATO missions in Kosovo or Afghanistan serving with colleagues from abroad or attending NATO training, some even working for NATO’s European command.<\/p>\n
The main reason why the KNBSZ is stepping up against Russian intelligence (despite the foreign policy direction of the Hungarian government) is the country\u2019s NATO membership and KNBSZ\u2019s strong attachment to NATO’s command structure. \u201eIn the case of KNBSZ, there are very specific NATO requests, concerning, for example, Russia, and those requests are difficult to ignore. In the case of the Constitutional Protection Office (AH, the Hungarian civilian counter-intelligence), which is overseen by the Ministry of Interior, this transparency is lacking.\u00a0I do not even remember, for example, when AH presented their last quiet expulsion of Russian spies,” said a source familiar with the work of the national security committee.<\/p>\n
In the parliament’s national security committee, it had been mentioned a few times in recent years that Russian spying in Hungary is not mainly targeted at Hungary and Hungarian actors, but mostly at third countries and actors. For example, the Russian spy who was busted by the KNBSZ officers in the park near Budapest, did not trigger the response of NATO secret services because of activities connected to Hungary.<\/p>\n
Hungary, gateway to the Balkans<\/strong><\/h3>\nIn October 2016, the name of B\u0151ny, a small village in Western Hungary made headlines all around the world after an old neo-Nazi leader was involved in a shoot-out with Hungarian police forces. A Hungarian detective was killed as a result of the shoot-out. Index found out<\/a> that\u00a0accused murderer Istvan\u00a0Gyorkos and his far-right paramilitary organization, called the Hungarian National Front (MNA), had been in contact\u00a0with the GRU\u00a0for\u00a0years.\u00a0Russian military intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover at the Russian Embassy in Budapest\u00a0gave military training to Hungarian neo-Nazis. These drills were disguised as airsoft games \u2013 war exercises carried out with training equipment that resembled real weapons.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/direkt36.exot.hu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/ill2.jpg\")
Hungarian counter-terrorism units in B\u0151ny after the shoot-out<\/p><\/div>\n
These diplomats were working with the Russian military attache in Budapest. The Russians engaged with the neo-Nazis so openly that sometimes they even met them dressed up in Russian military uniforms, said one of Direkt36’s sources familiar with the work of the national security committee.\u00a0The GRU intelligence officer that KNBSZ exposed in the park in 2016 not only financed their operations but also supplied weapons and training, a source working for a NATO country\u2019s government told Direkt36 on condition of not disclosing their name due to the sensitivity of the topic.<\/p>\n
\u201dThe Russians\u2019 ambition for subversion was not Hungary-specific. Since 2015-2016, the Russians had very similar operations throughout the entire Balkans region,” for example the coup attempt in Montenegro in autumn 2016, explained the official working for a NATO country. The Russian spy who was exposed in the park was also involved in GRU operations in the Balkans. He was in touch with illegal arms traders and other groups of organized crime \u2013 including Serbian groups \u2013 in the Balkans.\u00a0According to our foreign source, it was primarily because of his contribution to the destabilization of Balkan countries that the Russian diplomat was quietly expelled from Hungary. This was confirmed by a source familiar with the work of the Hungarian national security committee.\u00a0“It was the MNA-connection that brought him attention, but the secret operation to force him out of the country was not specifically related to it,” the source said.<\/p>\n
[ifr id=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Xitc8VRwe8″]<\/p>\n
“For Russian intelligence, Budapest and the Russian Embassy are important primarily because of their role in logistics and transit. This is because the country\u2019s geographic location makes Hungary a gateway to both the West and the Carpathian Basin. A gateway to both Ukraine and Romania, countries important to the United States, and to the Balkans,\u201d Zsolt Molnar, former Socialist chair of the national security committee told Direkt36.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0a long-serving security officer\u00a0of AH, Hungary is a target country only to a lesser extent for Russian secret services. It is more of an operational and logistics base, where\u00a0they organize their clandestine secret service operations for the Balkans.\u00a0“The role of Hungary for Russian intelligence is that this is the place where they have their messengers, operations executive staff, safe houses, or car rentals. It is much more practical to manage these in Hungary, inside the Schengen area, than in the Balkans. There is no way to know exactly how many of these are organized inside Hungary, but the volume is very high,\u201d the former security officer explained.<\/p>\n
Another retired Hungarian counter-intelligence officer reported similar things.\u00a0The source previously participated in international cooperations and had to work (typically on counter-terrorism cases) with Russian security officers too sometimes. “When Hungarian services had to cooperate with them, the Russians\u2019 agents often did not fly in from Moscow, but from Belgrade” said the source who, based on his own experience, believes that today “Budapest is one of the messenger or courier centers of Russian secret services”.<\/p>\n
Additionally, for a long time, the passage between the Balkans and Hungary was convenient not only by plane or on a highway, but also through the green border. For example, the Russian secret services could smuggle practically anything into Hungary from Serbia.\u00a0By the 2010s, the previously strict Serbian border protection had weakened considerably and the Hungarian border patrol was insufficient as well.\u00a0“The Hungarian-Serbian border section had become the weakest spot in Hungary, and a testing ground before the migration crisis in 2015 that proved that anything can pass through that border,\u201d\u00a0Oszkar\u00a0Nikowitz, the Hungarian ambassador to Belgrade under the Orban government between 2010 and 2014 told Direkt36.\u00a0Nikowitz\u00a0already complained about this in 2015, during the time of Hungary\u2019s migration crisis. He told the now-defunct daily Magyar Nemzet<\/a>, that despite official claims by the Hungarian government, Budapest for a long time had neglected to act against the illegal border crossing from Serbia: “I was outraged already back then that anyone who wants to can come into my country, can come in anywhere, and can bring in anything, like, for example, weapons or drugs.\u201d<\/p>\nThere is a historic prelude to the GRU, which is practically unchanged in structure since Soviet times, using Hungary primarily in the direction of the Balkans. \u201dTraditionally Hungary served as a gateway to the Balkans. Within the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union had entrusted the Hungarians to conduct military espionage on Yugoslavia.\u00a0After 1999, Hungary also became one of NATO\u2019s Balkans specialists,” Attila Demko explained to Direkt36. Demko led the Department of Strategic Analysis in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense until the beginning of 2018.<\/p>\n
Neighbors of\u00a0Hungary and multiple non-Moscow friendly countries in the Balkans are also worried about the new nuclear power plant that\u00a0Rosatom is building at Paks.\u00a0A colony of 5,000-6,000 Russians are settling in Paks to execute the project and later operate the power plant. It is feared that the colony in Paks is not only made up of engineers and scientists, but also of Russian intelligence agents that will not spy on Hungary primarily, but on its neighbors, a diplomat representing a neighboring country explained to Direkt36. A former senior counter-intelligence officer of AH<\/a>, Ferenc Katrein agreed: “Hungary is not prepared for the fact that thousands of Russian citizens will soon be settled in the country without any proper security screening”.<\/p>\nAndr\u00e1s Szab\u00f3 contributed to the reporting.<\/i><\/p>\n
Closed hearing of the National Security Committee<\/p><\/div>\n
Asking for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, two sources familiar with the work of the committee told us that the December 2016 meeting was the last time that Hungarian secret services reported having exposed and quietly expelled Russian spies from Hungary. During the Orban governments \u2013 since 2010 \u2013, approximately ten similar cases (including this one) was mentioned before the committee.<\/p>\n
With quiet expulsions, first the domestic security services somehow expose the foreign intelligence officer, then the spy leaves the country for good either at the command of his or her superiors, or at the strong request of the host country\u2019s counter-intelligence. In such cases, the spy affair is not formally recognized at a diplomatic level, although the foreign ministries of the two countries may receive a confidential briefing about the events. An essential element of quiet expulsions (as the name suggests) is that these cases are not disclosed to the public. This is the reason why Minister of Foreign Affairs Peter Szijjarto said that no Russian diplomats were expelled from Hungary when Hungarian news site Index asked him in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n What makes the Hungarian practice strange compared to other countries of the former Eastern bloc is that there are no official expulsions, only quiet ones. A Hungarian source from the national security committee said that quiet expulsions \u201ecould be painful, too\u201d, but this is also a way for the Hungarian government to avoid an open confrontation with Moscow. However, only in recent weeks has the nabbing of several Russian spies been made public in other countries of the region.\u00a0In November, Austria announced<\/a> that one of the colonels of the Austrian army had been selling military secrets to Russia since the ’90s.\u00a0A few weeks later, Slovakia expelled a Russian diplomat<\/a> \u2013 an undercover GRU agent \u2013 who had been spying against Slovakia and NATO.\u00a0At the beginning of December, Czech counter-intelligence announced<\/a> that they had, also through quiet expulsions, exposed a Russian spy network earlier during the year and completely paralyzed their activities.\u00a0Poland and the Baltic states are catching Russian spies (both military and civilian spies) much more frequently and are proud to inform the public.<\/p>\n Since 2010, the only official expulsion in Hungary took place in the spring of 2018, when, responding to the Skripal poisoning, Budapest joined the UK\u2019s initiative and expelled a GRU-affiliated Russian diplomat.\u00a0However, Direkt36 found out about this rare incident<\/a> that in reality Budapest and Moscow\u00a0colluded in\u00a0the background and conducted the mutual bans of each other’s diplomats in a way to cause the least possible damage to Russian-Hungarian relations.\u00a0The Russian diplomat chosen to be expelled from Hungary was about to complete his posting and was already preparing to go home.<\/p>\n The quiet Hungarian expulsions typically have the disadvantage that silence can even embolden Russian spying activity.\u00a0“Why does Russian intelligence love Budapest so much?\u00a0That is because the risk here is the lowest if they make mistakes or get exposed.\u00a0Russia’s prestige will not be hurt because the Hungarian government keeps everything under the table, and quiet expulsions are a good example of that\u201d, Andras Racz, Political Capital Institute\u2019s expert on security issues told Direkt36.\u00a0According to Racz, however, there is a very important difference between the attitudes of the Hungarian security community and the Hungarian political leadership towards the threat posed by Russian intelligence.\u00a0Besides Racz, numerous sources dealing with national security issues on different levels agreed unanimously while talking with Direkt36 that the KNBSZ is doing a serious job of tackling Russian intelligence. However, it is always up to the narrow political elite to decide how spying affairs should be handled on a diplomatic level and in public.<\/p>\n The operation of 2016, as well as the previous other unofficial and secret expulsions, seem to contradict the Kremlin-friendly foreign policy of the Orban government.\u00a0Based on our background conversations regarding the topic, these operations were largely not initiated by the Hungarian government.\u00a0KNBSZ\u2019s leadership (director general Jozsef Kovacs and his successor, Janos Beres) and staff are committed to Western values \u200band the Western alliance system, both professionally and in personal worldview.\u00a0Many of them participated in rotations of NATO missions in Kosovo or Afghanistan serving with colleagues from abroad or attending NATO training, some even working for NATO’s European command.<\/p>\n The main reason why the KNBSZ is stepping up against Russian intelligence (despite the foreign policy direction of the Hungarian government) is the country\u2019s NATO membership and KNBSZ\u2019s strong attachment to NATO’s command structure. \u201eIn the case of KNBSZ, there are very specific NATO requests, concerning, for example, Russia, and those requests are difficult to ignore. In the case of the Constitutional Protection Office (AH, the Hungarian civilian counter-intelligence), which is overseen by the Ministry of Interior, this transparency is lacking.\u00a0I do not even remember, for example, when AH presented their last quiet expulsion of Russian spies,” said a source familiar with the work of the national security committee.<\/p>\n In the parliament’s national security committee, it had been mentioned a few times in recent years that Russian spying in Hungary is not mainly targeted at Hungary and Hungarian actors, but mostly at third countries and actors. For example, the Russian spy who was busted by the KNBSZ officers in the park near Budapest, did not trigger the response of NATO secret services because of activities connected to Hungary.<\/p>\n In October 2016, the name of B\u0151ny, a small village in Western Hungary made headlines all around the world after an old neo-Nazi leader was involved in a shoot-out with Hungarian police forces. A Hungarian detective was killed as a result of the shoot-out. Index found out<\/a> that\u00a0accused murderer Istvan\u00a0Gyorkos and his far-right paramilitary organization, called the Hungarian National Front (MNA), had been in contact\u00a0with the GRU\u00a0for\u00a0years.\u00a0Russian military intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover at the Russian Embassy in Budapest\u00a0gave military training to Hungarian neo-Nazis. These drills were disguised as airsoft games \u2013 war exercises carried out with training equipment that resembled real weapons.<\/p>\n Hungarian counter-terrorism units in B\u0151ny after the shoot-out<\/p><\/div>\n These diplomats were working with the Russian military attache in Budapest. The Russians engaged with the neo-Nazis so openly that sometimes they even met them dressed up in Russian military uniforms, said one of Direkt36’s sources familiar with the work of the national security committee.\u00a0The GRU intelligence officer that KNBSZ exposed in the park in 2016 not only financed their operations but also supplied weapons and training, a source working for a NATO country\u2019s government told Direkt36 on condition of not disclosing their name due to the sensitivity of the topic.<\/p>\n \u201dThe Russians\u2019 ambition for subversion was not Hungary-specific. Since 2015-2016, the Russians had very similar operations throughout the entire Balkans region,” for example the coup attempt in Montenegro in autumn 2016, explained the official working for a NATO country. The Russian spy who was exposed in the park was also involved in GRU operations in the Balkans. He was in touch with illegal arms traders and other groups of organized crime \u2013 including Serbian groups \u2013 in the Balkans.\u00a0According to our foreign source, it was primarily because of his contribution to the destabilization of Balkan countries that the Russian diplomat was quietly expelled from Hungary. This was confirmed by a source familiar with the work of the Hungarian national security committee.\u00a0“It was the MNA-connection that brought him attention, but the secret operation to force him out of the country was not specifically related to it,” the source said.<\/p>\n [ifr id=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Xitc8VRwe8″]<\/p>\n “For Russian intelligence, Budapest and the Russian Embassy are important primarily because of their role in logistics and transit. This is because the country\u2019s geographic location makes Hungary a gateway to both the West and the Carpathian Basin. A gateway to both Ukraine and Romania, countries important to the United States, and to the Balkans,\u201d Zsolt Molnar, former Socialist chair of the national security committee told Direkt36.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0a long-serving security officer\u00a0of AH, Hungary is a target country only to a lesser extent for Russian secret services. It is more of an operational and logistics base, where\u00a0they organize their clandestine secret service operations for the Balkans.\u00a0“The role of Hungary for Russian intelligence is that this is the place where they have their messengers, operations executive staff, safe houses, or car rentals. It is much more practical to manage these in Hungary, inside the Schengen area, than in the Balkans. There is no way to know exactly how many of these are organized inside Hungary, but the volume is very high,\u201d the former security officer explained.<\/p>\n Another retired Hungarian counter-intelligence officer reported similar things.\u00a0The source previously participated in international cooperations and had to work (typically on counter-terrorism cases) with Russian security officers too sometimes. “When Hungarian services had to cooperate with them, the Russians\u2019 agents often did not fly in from Moscow, but from Belgrade” said the source who, based on his own experience, believes that today “Budapest is one of the messenger or courier centers of Russian secret services”.<\/p>\n Additionally, for a long time, the passage between the Balkans and Hungary was convenient not only by plane or on a highway, but also through the green border. For example, the Russian secret services could smuggle practically anything into Hungary from Serbia.\u00a0By the 2010s, the previously strict Serbian border protection had weakened considerably and the Hungarian border patrol was insufficient as well.\u00a0“The Hungarian-Serbian border section had become the weakest spot in Hungary, and a testing ground before the migration crisis in 2015 that proved that anything can pass through that border,\u201d\u00a0Oszkar\u00a0Nikowitz, the Hungarian ambassador to Belgrade under the Orban government between 2010 and 2014 told Direkt36.\u00a0Nikowitz\u00a0already complained about this in 2015, during the time of Hungary\u2019s migration crisis. He told the now-defunct daily Magyar Nemzet<\/a>, that despite official claims by the Hungarian government, Budapest for a long time had neglected to act against the illegal border crossing from Serbia: “I was outraged already back then that anyone who wants to can come into my country, can come in anywhere, and can bring in anything, like, for example, weapons or drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a historic prelude to the GRU, which is practically unchanged in structure since Soviet times, using Hungary primarily in the direction of the Balkans. \u201dTraditionally Hungary served as a gateway to the Balkans. Within the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union had entrusted the Hungarians to conduct military espionage on Yugoslavia.\u00a0After 1999, Hungary also became one of NATO\u2019s Balkans specialists,” Attila Demko explained to Direkt36. Demko led the Department of Strategic Analysis in the Hungarian Ministry of Defense until the beginning of 2018.<\/p>\n Neighbors of\u00a0Hungary and multiple non-Moscow friendly countries in the Balkans are also worried about the new nuclear power plant that\u00a0Rosatom is building at Paks.\u00a0A colony of 5,000-6,000 Russians are settling in Paks to execute the project and later operate the power plant. It is feared that the colony in Paks is not only made up of engineers and scientists, but also of Russian intelligence agents that will not spy on Hungary primarily, but on its neighbors, a diplomat representing a neighboring country explained to Direkt36. A former senior counter-intelligence officer of AH<\/a>, Ferenc Katrein agreed: “Hungary is not prepared for the fact that thousands of Russian citizens will soon be settled in the country without any proper security screening”.<\/p>\n Andr\u00e1s Szab\u00f3 contributed to the reporting.<\/i><\/p>\nHungary, gateway to the Balkans<\/strong><\/h3>\n