NATIONALIST LEADERS IN EASTERN EUROPE WINNING BIG AS POPULISM SURGES

With more than 60% of the votes counted in Hungary, preliminary results indicated that Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister since 2010, and already Europe’s longest serving leader, had won a fourth consecutive term despite accusations by the opposition that he has enabled Russia’s military onslaught by cozying up for years to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

“We won a victory so big that you can perhaps see it from the moon, and certainly from Brussels,” Orban told a jubilant crowd of supporters late Sunday, taking a dig at the European Union, which he has long accused of pushing LGBTQ and migrant rights in defiance of the democratic will of Hungarian voters.

The preliminary results dashed the hopes of Orban’s political foes that an unusually united opposition camp could break his ruling Fidesz party’s increasingly authoritarian grip on the Central European nation next to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking early Sunday his capital, Kyiv, described Orban as “virtually the only one in Europe to openly support Mr Putin.”

Asked about Zelensky’s assessment after casting his vote in Budapest on Sunday morning, Orban said curtly: “Mr Zelensky is not voting today. Thank you. Are there any other questions?”

President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, also Moscow-friendly, has governed Serbia since 2012, and was expected to win reelection after rallying his nationalist and pro-Russian base by refusing to join the European Union in imposing sanctions on Russia. Serbia hopes to become a member of the European bloc, but its application has stalled.

An unusually high turnout in Serbia of nearly 60% forced officials to keep polling stations open late into the evening in some areas. Amid complaints of foul play by the opposition, the central election commission in Belgrade, the capital, said it would not issue results until Monday morning.

But exit polls indicated that Vucic would win a new term as president and that his Serbian Progressive Party would retain its hold on Parliament, albeit with a reduced majority. The opposition said it had won control of the municipal government in Belgrade.

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