THE UK will continue to have a “robust” relationship with Hungary, Downing Street said after right-wing nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban secured another term in office.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory message to Orban following the landslide election win for the Hungarian leader’s Fidesz party.

Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said he was “not aware of any plans at the moment” for a congratulatory message from the Prime Minister, but insisted that Hungary was an important partner for the UK.

The spokesman highlighted Hungary’s membership of the Nato alliance and the Visegrad (V4) group of countries, along with the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.

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“Hungary is an important Nato ally and a V4 partner and we will work closely with them to ensure further vital aid reaches the most vulnerable in Ukraine,” the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said.

“We want to build on the strong and robust relationship we have with Hungary to reinforce Nato’s eastern flank and support Ukraine.”

Victory for Orban’s party was welcomed in the Kremlin, with Putin’s message saying that “despite the difficult international situation, the further development of bilateral partnership fully conforms to the interests of peoples of Russia and Hungary”.

The National:

Orban is viewed as Putin’s closest ally within the European Union, with Hungary maintaining close economic ties with Moscow, including continuing to import Russian gas and oil on favourable terms, further complicating ties with Brussels, which were already difficult.

Orban described “Brussels bureaucrats” and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as elements of an “overwhelming force” that his party had overcome.

In a 10-minute speech to Fidesz party officials and supporters at an election night event in Budapest, Orban said it was a “huge victory” for his right-wing party.

“We won a victory so big that you can see it from the moon, and you can certainly see it from Brussels,” Orban said.

“The whole world has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this is not the past, this is the future,” Orban said.

With a quarter of votes still to be counted, Orban’s Fidesz-led coalition had won 54.5%, while a pro-European opposition coalition, United for Hungary, had nearly 34%, according to the National Election Office.

Edit Zgut, a political scientist at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, predicted that what appeared to be a clear victory for Orban would allow him to move further in an autocratic direction, sidelining dissidents and capturing new areas of the economy.

“Hungary seems to have reached a point of no return,” she said. “The key lesson is that the playing field is tilted so much that it became almost impossible to replace Fidesz in elections.”