Relations between Hungary and Ukraine have deteriorated significantly over the past month. In early March, Hungarian authorities arrested seven Ukrainian bank workers who were transporting millions of US dollars worth of cash and gold through Hungary to Ukraine.

Hungary’s tax authority said they had been detained on suspicion of money laundering, which prompted a furious response from Ukraine. In a post on social media, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha denounced what he called “state terrorism and racketeering”.

This incident followed an earlier decision by the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to deploy the military to guard power plants after warning that Ukraine planned to disrupt his country’s energy system. Orbán had previously accused Kyiv of holding back Russian oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline, which passes through Ukrainian territory.

In these conflicts with Ukraine, Orbán’s eyes are certainly on the home front. Hungarians head to the polls in April for parliamentary elections and, with ordinary people having suffered from high inflation and limited job prospects in recent years, Orbán may well be ginning up international incidents to distract from his poor economic record.

But a deeper dive into the region’s history shows that Orbán has often picked diplomatic fights with neighbouring states, with Ukraine taking the brunt of this campaign.

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