You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on Strategy, Defense, and Foreign Affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans, and I'm the founder of War on the Rocks.

In this episode, I spoke to my new friend Sandor

Isak. He's an attorney practicing in Budapest Hungary. He's also a blogger and an activist for

democratic causes. He has a substack called The Hungarian Muse, which you should read and subscribe

to. He also has his own podcast. We spoke about Peter Majjar's victory over Victor Orban who ruled Hungary as prime minister for 16

years, what it means for Hungary itself, as well as its relationship with countries around it

and in Europe. Enjoy the show. How did you first get involved in writing about observing, participating

in Hungarian politics? Well, it was almost 15 years ago,

and basically it was my drive to write. So he didn't start it as a political blog,

it started as a personal blog. But I was working for a guy who was a member of parliament.

So he was participating in election campaigns. And slowly but surely all my work was about politics, so I

started to write about it, and I was pulled in in this kind of blogging more than 10 years ago now.

There's just been a big election, of course, in Hungary and a major turn of events. For those of

our listeners who don't follow European politics closely, can you just give us a very brief

explanation of what happened?

The Prime Minister, Victor Orban, was defeated after 16 years. He started out as your basic

liberal politician 16 years ago, but...

Even funded initially by his great enemy, George Soros?

Yes, but that was back in the late 1980s.

But gradually, he grew close to Putin and started to work as Putin's agent within the EU, more like a Trojan horse.

And in the last couple of years, maybe last five years, he's been

...