This is John Batchelor, speaking with George Friedman, the chairman and founder of Geopolitical

futures about Victor Orban, the President of Hungary, twice elected 19 in 98 to 2002 and again in 2010 consecutively years since then. He's in trouble.

Protests in Budapest, claims of financial irregularity. However, George Friedman assesses Orban why he's

been successful for so many decades and at 60 years old is a young man. He can lead hungry for a lot longer

or go on to other activities. Here's George Friedman on Victor Orban, the outsider, the oddball, the iconoclastic, the dissenter of EU and

NATO through these last two years of war in Ukraine, which he borders, Hungary borders Ukraine.

The view of him, it's not a memory yet, up until recently, was that he might cut corners and so on, but he has stood up to the

European Union, he has stood up to NATO, and he went his own way with the Ukrainian war. He went ahead and

stood with Putin because one he didn't particularly care for the Ukrainians.

Two, a lot of Ukraine used to be Hungarian which was lost in the tree and unpacked many years ago and he had a dream of

wanting to recover it. So he felt that the Russians would sweep over Ukraine anyway and he felt that they would agree to

turning over Ukrainian parts to Hungary and so he broke with NATO he broke the United States, he broke with a lot of people to produce this Hungarian interest.

One thing to remember, he's a nationalist, not a nationalist in the vulgar sense.

He saw himself as speaking for the Hungarian soul,

and for a very long time the public accepted that.

That's changing, but for a long time the public accepted that. That's changing but for a long time

of there. More of this later. Thank you.