UGH

Putin’s Pal Viktor Orban Declares Victory in Hungary’s Election

The EU’s longest-serving head of government said he’d “won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon” before all the votes were tallied.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, declared a victory “so big that you can see it from the moon” in his country’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. With roughly 90 percent of the vote tallied, and his ultra-conservative Fidesz party having won 135 of 199 seats in Hungary’s parliament, Orban claimed his fourth consecutive term in office. “The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won,” Orban said, according to a translation by the Associated Press. Peter Marki-Zay, the leader of the pro-European opposition alliance United for Hungary, admitted defeat shortly after Orban’s speech. “We do not dispute that Fidesz won this election,” Marki-Zay said. “That this election was democratic and free is, of course, something we continue to dispute.” The most pro-Russia leader in the European Union who has often boasted of his long association with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban is also the union’s longest-serving head of government, having been in power for 12 years.