INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Russia-linked investment bank that critics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban call a "Kremlin spy bank."Rallied by opposition leader
Peter Marki-Zay, they chanted "Russians go home!," a slogan used during the anti-Communist uprising in 1956 that was brutally crushed by
Soviet troops.Orban's carefully nurtured ties to President Vladimir Putin have become a lightning rod for the country's embattled opposition
power since 2010 and is bidding for a fourth straight term, still holds a narrow lead
when he was shored up by populist economic and anti-immigration policies."Many conservative Hungarians have traditionally been anti-Russian,
so the invasion could be a red line for many Orban voters," Andras Bozoki, a politics professor at the Vienna-based Central European
after winning power 12 years ago.He has met Putin annually, signing deals with Russia's Rosatom to expand a nuclear plant and with Gazprom
progress toward NATO membership because of a dispute about language rights for the large ethnic-Hungarian minority in western Ukraine.Such
had gathered in front of the International Investment Bank (IIB), majority-owned by the Russian state, which moved its headquarters from
Europe and, potentially, for intelligence gathering.Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have all said they are
pulling out of the bank following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.Marki-Zay says Hungary should follow suit and also suspend the Rosatom-backed
nuclear project.But Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto says the IIB is not on any EU sanctions list and Hungarians need nuclear
has approved EU sanctions against Russia and condemned the invasion but has refused to condemn Putin.Hungary supports Ukraine's bid to join
Russia policy of the last 12 years has clearly been a strategic failure and his double narrative game during this war could backfire,"
