The National Military Intelligence Agency of Budapest has operated a clandestine spy network in western Ukraine with the mission of determining the local support level for a possible invasion of Hungarian troops, the Ukraine security service (Слжжжа безеки україни – SBU) in a declaration of Friday.
SBU Counter-Intelligence Operators in Ukraine’s Far-Western Zakarpattia (Old Name: Transcarpathia) Region Arrested Two Ukrainian Citizens Secretly Recruit to Determine Whhether or Not People Living There Would approval of a Hungarian “Peacekeeping contingent” Province, Among Other Hostile Spy Missions Ordered by Hungary and Targeting Ukrainian National Security, Sbu Spokesman Artem Dekhtaryenko said in the video announcement.
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The arrests, he said, have marked the first time that Ukrainian counterattack had broken a spying ring in a state of NATO. The pair was also responsible for collecting sensitive information on armed facilities and armed units (AFU), to follow local officials and to build and develop a local agent network, said Dekhtaryenko.
The SBU said that a suspect is a former Ukrainian soldier, 40, from the western district of Beregov who was recruited by Hungarian military intelligence in 2021 as a sleeping agent “in stand-by mode”.
The SBU declaration identified its manager as a member of Hungarian military intelligence who, in September 2024, ordered the Ukrainian agent to start the active espionage work against the Ukrainian targets. The identity and location of the Hungarian spymastre are known to the Ukrainian secret services, said Dekhtaryarenko.
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The Ukrainian agent, shown in the video with a pixel face, told an interviewer that he was recruited after asking for Hungarian citizenship in a Hungarian Bureau of the Consulate in Ukraine. He was paid for money to perceive protected Ukrainian “military information”, said the man, speaking in a good Ukrainian.
Another section of the SBU video was the recording of an intercepted telephone conversation, allegedly between the Ukrainian agent and its Hungarian manager, discussing a next meeting. They speak Hungarian and the Ukrainian agent uses the honorary “Dr” to his Hungarian boss.
Other contents, apparently registered clandestinely by the Ukrainian SBU via a camera inside a late model SUV, showed the Ukrainian suspect sitting next to a Hungarian, and the apparent transfer of an envelope of Hungarian silver to Ukrainian. Later, during the same meeting or perhaps another meeting inside the car, the Hungarian manager seems to give a new smartphone to Ukrainian and teaches his agent how to secure communications using the application signal.
Dekhtaryenko said the two Ukrainian agents had transmitted data to the Government of Hungary on the armed forces of armed air defense facilities (AFU) and the losses suffered by local units in combat against the Russian army. Information on the locations and combat capacity of S-300 air defense systems deployed in the region was an alleged priority.
The SBU said that the male agent had personally identified the location of AFU anti-aerial missile systems in the region and transmitted the network’s contact details to managers to managers. Before arrest, man tried, without success, to recruit two Ukrainian citizens, according to the press release.
The second alleged Hungarian agent was a Ukrainian woman and a resident of the Zakarpattia region who was a former member of the AFU service with access to a local military air base. Her tasks informed the Hungarian intelligence of the presence of AFU planes and helicopters in the Zakarpattia region, as well as the defense systems of the military unit in which she had served. In a brief statement, the woman seems to admit that she spied on for Hungary. His face was pixelated.
The SBU press release said the Ukrainian secret services knew “for years”, the pair could be activated by Hungarian managers and that once arrived at clandestine work, their activities were closely followed.
“The counterintelligence of the SBU has documented each stage of Hungarian agents and has held suspects at their places of residence. During the search, phones and other material proofs of subversive activity were entered,” the statement said.
The SBU video showed a hooded and handcuffed man driven by a higher class residence and placed in a service vehicle. His external appearance was similar to the man who later made a statement and the man recorded by video in the car. He did not visibly resist.
The pair faces potential high treason accusations committed under martial law. If it is condemned, the maximum sentence would be a perpetuity imprisonment with confiscation of all goods.
Ukrainian national security was not injured by the spying work of the two agents and no state secrets has been compromised, according to the SBU press release.
According to the SBU, the man went to Hungary at least twice, the first time at the beginning of 2025, for face -to -face meetings with managers. He used a certificate by attracting that he was a caregiver for a sick father treated in a medical institution outside of Ukraine to cross the Ukrainian-Hungary border, according to the press release. According to Ukrainian law in war times, men aged 18 to 60 may not leave Ukraine. Rare exceptions are possible in case of personal need, generally linked to the health of a man or the health of relatives.
According to the SBU declaration, the two agents, in addition to discovering information on military facilities, the movements of Ukrainian officials and the recruitment of more spaces, were invited to develop information on the potential of a Hungarian military control of the Zakarpattia region.
Specific Orders to Agents Included, per the Sbu, Finding Out “(W) Hat will be the reaction of the military and civilian Population of Zakarpattia if a peacekeeping contingent, in Particular the Hungarian Army, Enters the Region; What Military Equipment and Weapons can Zakarpattia; what is the situation with the migration of the Hungarian Population in the region;
Ethnic Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority in the Zakarpattia region in Ukraine, with around 120,000 native Hungarian people representing approximately 12 to 13% of the total population of 1.1 million people in the region. The highest concentrations of Ethnic Hungarian live in the Tysa river valley (Hungarian: Tisza) along the Ukrainian-Hungary border.
Most political observers in Ukraine say that the loyalty of Ethnic Hungarians in the Ukrainian government is generally strong. One of the oldest units in AFU, the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, was raised in the Zakarpattia region. About one of the four officers and men of the 128th are called Ethnic Hungarians.
Ukrainian public opinion is generally friendly towards the Hungarians but hostile to the government of the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a French-speaking supporter of Russia and closer relations between Budapest and the Kremlin. Orbán called kyiv to stop fighting the invasion of Russia and to put around 20% of the territory of Ukraine in Moscow. His government has repeatedly accused the management of Ukraine of discriminating the Ethnic Hungarians living in Ukraine.
The Hungarian Foreign Minister, farting Szijjártó, the comment on Friday to Budapest Media said that SBU affirmations were most likely base, but he did not refuse them: “It is clear that anti-Hungarian propaganda is often used in Ukraine.
Independent Hungarian and Ukrainian media reported that the SBU report was probably correct on Friday.
On Thursday, in Hungarian social media, a video surfaced showing the Hungarian Minister of Defense Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky, apparently in a speech in 2023 to the troops, declaring that the army of his country would cease “Peace-related” activities, transfers the national defense policy of NATO alignment and “prepares for war”.
The first ranks of the Hungarian army would be purged pro-nato officers so that the Hungarian army is ready for combat and is able to defend Hungarian sovereignty, Szalay-Bobrovniczky dit.
Peter Madyar, the pro-nato chief of the Hungarian opposition, made the video of Szalay-Bobrovniczky public and authenticated it. Madyar accused the Orbán regime of hostility to NATO and a too close friendship with the Kremlin.
