Hungary has only just concluded a months-long campaign against Ukraine aimed at blocking it from joining the EU. The autocratic prime minister, Viktor Orban, and his political apparatus have been portraying their neighboring country as a mafia state, overrun with hordes of dangerous criminals who would rob, kidnap, and kill Hungarian people.

If people thought this was the nadir of Orban's anti-Ukraine propaganda, they are in for a disappointment. The Hungarian leadership is portraying the death of a recruit of Hungarian origin in Ukraine on July 6 as an attack on the Hungarian nation as a whole, declaring Ukraine to be a sort of evil empire. And he's taking this stance, even though the circumstances of the man's death are not clear.

Orban has claimed that "a Hungarian citizen was beaten to death in Ukraine." With no proof whatsoever, he is accusing Ukraine and the EU of covering up this supposed crime. He published a post on Facebook, on a black background, that read: "The truth cannot be silenced!"

Pro-government Hungarian media have published hundreds of highly emotional articles about the conscript's death. Sandor Fegyir, Ukraine's ambassador to Budapest, was summoned — an unequivocal sign of anger in diplomatic circles. Hundreds of furious people, led by Orban's chief propagandist, Zsolt Bayer, demonstrated outside the Ukrainian embassy in the Hungarian capital.

In a letter to the dead man's parents, the Hungarian president, Tamas Sulyok, wrote that he was "utterly horrified" by what he had heard about the circumstances leading to their son's........

© Deutsche Welle