By David Kirichenko & Alexander J. Motyl

Hungary’s prime minister does not seem to grasp the gravity of the moment.

His ally, Russia, is bleeding by a thousand cuts from Ukrainian drones, while Vladimir Putin’s former pal, Donald Trump, is now calling Russia a “paper tiger” and providing Kyiv with intelligence for long-range strikes.

For months, the U.S. president tried to play peacemaker, but Viktor Orban’s friend in Moscow ignored him – escalating missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and expanding hybrid warfare across Europe. Putin’s resolve to escalate only makes Trump look weak, and Trump does not tolerate looking weak. Now he appears to be bringing a stick to the negotiations. If Ukraine is indeed receiving Tomahawk missiles, things will only get worse for Putin. And for his friend in Budapest.

Orban appears to be sleepwalking into a crisis of his own making. His love affair with Putin has isolated him in Europe. His reliance on Russian oil threatens to result in an economic catastrophe if and when the oil stops flowing through Ukraine. His revanchist claims on Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Province has angered Kyiv, without winning Ukraine’s Hungarians to his side. And if he continues to provoke the drone superpower in Kyiv by violating Ukrainian airspace with Hungarian drones, he may one day find himself on the receiving end of a heavy stick.How different things were in 1989, when more than 200,000 Hungarians gathered in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square for the reburial of Imre Nagy, the executed leader of the 1956 Revolution. The ceremony culminated in a bold seven-minute speech by a young Viktor Orban, who called for free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops still stationed in Hungary. It was that same Orban who during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, condemned it as an “imperialistic action of pure........

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