Orbán Placed in Europe: Ukraine, Russia and the Radical-Right Populist Heartland

ABSTRACT Radical-right populism (RRP) is notably based on the production of antagonism involving the ‘people’, the ‘elite’ and ‘others’. The analysis of RRP discourse can be particularly useful to investigate RRP geopolitics as the representation of an international situation legitimising national and foreign policies. Based on an analysis of narratives relating to Ukraine and Russia produced by Viktor Orbán, the RRP Prime Minister of Hungary, the current article researches a key spatial object associated with the people and justifying Orbán’s position concerning the two countries between 2014 and 2022: the heartland. This analysis shows that Orbán refused to choose his ‘camp’ between Russia and Ukraine over many years, preferring to position himself as a defender of a people’s heartland, the location of which changes depending on his addresses and temporal contexts. The defence of this heartland generally involves the naming of a clear enemy: the Western liberal world.


Introduction
Viktor Orbán occupies a singular position in European Union (EU) politics, as the longest-serving government executive and the leading voice of radical-right populism (RRP).This standpoint rejects the liberal democratic model, including its rules and laws, the respect of minorities and the freedom of media that was required to join the EU (Mudde 2017;Lamour 2021).Hungary would not have been able to join the EU in the 2020s, due to the breach of liberal democratic values by Orbán.His repeated mark of sympathy for Putin's regime would have also probably prevented Hungary from joining NATO.Nevertheless, as head of a European Union's member state, Orbán can veto EU sanctions on Russia following its aggression in Ukraine in 2022 (Rankin 2022b).Furthermore, it is one of the few Central European countries of the EU that is refusing to provide military support to the Ukrainians or to use its territory for the transit of this support, while Hungary has in parallel greeted a greater number of NATO troops to defend its country from potential Russian aggression.Orbán is a state executive who wants to get the best from Western alliances (free market, solidarity fund and military security) and a Russian partnership (cheap energy supply, access to a vast market and influx of capital in Hungary), while supporting radical-right populist leaders (e.g., Marine Le Pen in France and Janez Janša in Slovenia) -a position that could jeopardise the liberal foundation of the European Union.However, there is a lack of studies on the long-term representation of Western alliances and Eastern partnerships by Orbán when he has made references to Ukraine and Russia after 2014 and to the first military intervention of Russian forces in Ukraine.He is one of the key representatives of radical-right populism in Europe, but what do his narratives comprise when he mentions the two countries?
President Zelenskyy asked Orbán in March 2022 to choose his camp concerning the war in Ukraine (Rankin 2022a).Analysing the populist discourse of the Hungarian prime minister is currently viewed as a way to explore the international and spatial camps within which he conceives European geopolitics in relation to Ukraine and Russia.Populism is characterised by its chameleonic dimension (Taggart 2000); that is, the flexible use of antagonism involving a frustrated/threatened heartland and its people by dominant and frustrating elite-powered forces.It is thus hypothesised that the use of radical-right populism by Orbán in relation to Ukraine and Russia helps him to draw the contours of a scale-changing heartland across Western and Eastern geopolitical ensembles, suffering equally from Western and Eastern dominant powers depending on moments in time and the audience.To secure domestic and foreign support for his control of Hungary, what probably matters for Orbán is not Hungary belonging to a Western or Russian camp, but the defence of an evolving European people's camp frustrated by dominant powers.
The current article is structured in four main parts.First, a review of the literature concerning radical-right populism and critical geopolitics is provided, with a focus on the situation in Europe.Second, the research hypothesis and the methodology are detailed.Third, the results are presented in two main sections to investigate the Hungarian prime minister's references to Ukraine and Russia: a quantitative approach of textual content to explore Orbán's narratives, and a critical discourse analysis of key texts including structural radical-right populist elements.Last, a concluding discussion puts forward the issue of radical-right populism and geopolitics.

Radical-Right Populism and Critical Geopolitics in Europe: Fixing People-Centred Spatial Representations Across Borders
Radical-right populism (RRP) as an ideology is organised around three principles: the opposition between people and the elite, nativism (the vision of 'the people' as a cohesive and exclusionary in-group located somewhere, such as a given nation state or region) and authoritarianism (the support of an ordered society and increasing law and order measures against people who contest public authority) (Mudde 2017).RRP has been approached from three angles, which must be seen as complementarity: politicalstrategic, ideational and socio-cultural (Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017), the last two being central from a critical geopolitics perspective.The ideational angle consists of considering populism around the set of ideas involving people and the elite.It includes populism as a 'thin-centred ideology' (Mudde 2004), the core basis of which is to view society divided into two camps (pure people vs the corrupt elite), backed by 'thicker' ideologies such as nationalism or socialism.The ideational approach also includes populism as a discourse determined by a 'logic of articulation' (Laclau 2005, 33) between two empty signifiers (people and elite), the identity and components of which can be modified to shape antagonism between multiple representations of people and elites comprising two separated 'chains of equivalence' (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 144).Another out-group is often used in RRP narratives, especially that of Orbán's, to attract attention and electoral support: migrants (Bíró-Nagy 2022; Lamour and Varga 2020;Pajnik and Sauer 2017).From an ideational perspective, populist politicians have also been seen as political stakeholders 'performing crisis' through narratives expressing step by step the existence of a structural problem frustrating the people due to the dominating elite, and requiring radical changes (Biancalana et al. 2023;Moffitt 2015Moffitt , 2016)).What is central in populism is its chameleonic dimension (Taggart 2000); that is, the flexible and different components of people-centred in-groups opposed to the elite and out-groups in relation to varying issues -from local to internationaland for the good of the people's heartland.The socio-cultural approach to populism concerns the popular taste-driven style used by populist leaders to appeal to the people, in terms of the 'low' side of political communication in contrast to the more elite 'high' side.This style, aiming for with popular appeal, is organised through the choice of vocabulary (colourful, coarse, limited, native-first, etc.), the ways of speaking (loud, unabashed, passionate, informal, personal, etc.) and even the manner of dress (baseball cap, no tie, flashy shirts, etc.), in contrast to the traditional elite-like formal manner of the political realm.The popular style circulates the idea that the populist leader is both one of us, the people, and a unique representative of us, the people, in political arenas controlled by the elite (Ostiguy 2017).
Radical-right populist leaders represent space and relate policies on the control of space as heads of the political opposition or as public executives.By defining these representations and policies in the name of the people and for their good (and against the elite in the current unstable world order), these populist stakeholders show the relevance of critical geopolitics to appreciate international spatial representations beyond the Realpolitik and the rational interests of states associated with classical geopolitics (Dalby 1990(Dalby , 2020;;O'Tuathail 1996).As suggested by Dodds (2019), geopolitics is as much about a rational power struggle in space beyond states as it is about the popular and emotional representation to which the foreign policy of states is associated.In this regard, one could think of Vladimir Putin when he suggested that the Ukrainian state was controlled by drug addicts and neo-Nazis at the beginning of the 2022 Russian invasion of the country (Roth 2022).Donald Trump also immediately comes to mind when we approach populism and international affairs from a critical geopolitics perspective.His tweets as President of the United States have been analysed to investigate the relationships between a populist discursive style and the sphere of the highest style of political narratives, international relations, with the aim of emphasising the potential disruption of diplomatic norms by populist communication strategies (Šimunjak and Caliandro 2019).The interactions between Central European state executives have also revealed the existence of a political union among populist leaders across state borders (Kazharski 2018(Kazharski , 2022;;Lamour 2022a).One particular cross-border region in Central Europe is particularly used by a populist leader, Viktor Orbán, to advance international representations and political priorities beyond borders: the Carpathian Basin (Balogh 2021;Balogh et al. 2022;Lamour and Varga 2020;Szalai and Kopper 2020).RRP leaders share a common discursive agenda when they address international affairs: the representation and rejection of the current liberal globalised space.This is in terms of criticising a space organised by international political organisations, multilateral agreements and liberal cultural norms that are presented as a threat to the 'people'.The people are portrayed in turn as the source of state sovereignty, a cohesive community of workers and exclusionary cultural groups embedded into an endangered/disfranchised heartland; this heartland needing to be protected from globalisation through the securitisation of state borders and the control of networks and flows crosscutting these borders (Dalby 2020;Norris and Inglehart 2019).This attitude reminds us that geopolitics in an increasingly interdependent world is not simply about the control of fixed geographical entities (cities, places, territories, states), but also concerns narratives and policies on the control and management of international networks and accelerated/densified flows that connect and increase the political, economic, environmental and cultural interdependencies between these fixed entities and their environment (Agnew 2019).
Radical-right populist leaders are elected within bordered states.Their representation of foreign issues and the power they want to exercise internationally can be based consequently on pure domestic strategies; that is, the access to and/or the retention of executive power (Destradi, Plagemann, and Taş 2022;Lamour 2022bLamour , 2023)).However, these leaders can also forge alliances across borders to support one another, with a view to collectively changing the international and multilateral order in the name of their sovereign people (Glencross 2020;Lamour 2022c).Such alliances can be relatively concrete in Europe, for instance with Orbán's Hungary using its banking and media institutions to directly support two allies in the EU in their political campaigns, respectively Marine Le Pen in France and Janez Janša in Slovenia (Dunai and Abboud 2022;Walker 2020).The international deals between RRP-ruled states can in particular be quite strategic in the EU, to prevent having rights and funds suspended for these countries because of a severe breach of EU liberal democratic values, leading to the potential use of Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union.Implementation of this article still requires a unanimous vote, which is currently prevented by the Polish-Hungarian RRP states coalition (Pech and Scheppele 2017).By representing and acting in a European space where struggles are taking place, RRP leaders develop what has been often termed a 'trans-national populism' (De Cleen et al. 2019;Kuiper and Moffitt 2020;Lamour 2020Lamour , 2022d;;Lamour and Carls 2022;McDonnell and Werner 2019); that is, an ideology in which the statebounded and sovereign people, their representatives and their respective heartlands can coalesce beyond borders and be opposed to the common and scapegoated liberal elite managing the threatening globalisation process.Last, some populist-ruled states, such as Hungary, can also define a foreign policy consisting of forging cooperations with kin-minorities found in neighbouring countries.This policy can have both a domestic and an international objective in the case of Hungary, through: first, the attraction of the national electorate through the narratives of the 'people' separated from the motherland by the destiny of WWI and WWII, and second, the influence on these neighbouring states through investments in the diaspora's region and the support for active diaspora political groups participating in governmental coalitions at different scales (Lesińska and Héjj 2021).For example, Transcarpathia in Ukraine is a region where a Hungarian diaspora is found, with no fewer than 100,000 people declaring to have a Hungarian passport in 2019 (Tkachenko, Dakhova, and Zazuliak 2021).Hungary has notably commented on and intervened in ethno-cultural issues in Ukraine.The geopolitical importance of Ukraine for Orbán was especially visible internationally following the decision of the Ukrainian central state to implement a controversial education law in 2017, promoting Ukrainian to the perceived detriment of minority languages, including Hungarian (Kropp and Aasland 2021;Kulyk 2019;Reuters 2019;Venice Commission 2019).
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in late February 2022 has placed most European RRP parties and leaders in an awkward situation as -with the exception of the PiS party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland -they saw Putin's Russia as a worthy model of illiberal and sovereign democracy and a key partner to address international issues.Most of them developed a chameleonic position after the Russian attack in Ukraine; a position that combined their official condemnation of the aggression, but with their reserve or opposition to military support for Ukraine and their opposition to sanctions against Russia that would affect their people and families with a focus on energy resources, as for instance in the case of the Hungarian Prime Minister (Hungarian government 2022a).Nevertheless, how can we qualify the narratives referring to Russia and Ukraine made by Orbán, the most emblematic figure of RRP in the European Union (who, in contrast to most others populist leaders, has been in charge of an EU member state without interruption for more than a decade)?This investigation would enable us to appreciate the spatial approach of international politics by a RRP executive leader when he rules a progressively illiberal country embedded within structuring Western liberal alliances (EU and NATO), interacts with an illiberal Russian state and must define his position in relation to Ukraine, which is eager to join Western liberal alliances and leave the Russian state sphere of influence.

Hypothesis and Methodology
Radical-right populism (RRP) is characterised by its chameleonic dimension, involving a heartland and its people (Taggart 2000).In parallel, the use of RRP to address international affairs in Europe has been seen as dependent on domestic opportunities (Destradi, Plagemann, and Taş 2022) and on foreign alliances, notably in the name of a 'trans-national' people (De Cleen et al. 2019;Kuiper and Moffitt 2020;Lamour 2020Lamour , 2022d;;Lamour and Carls 2022;McDonnell and Werner 2019).It is consequently hypothesised that the use of RRP by Orbán when he has made references to Ukraine and Russian over many years, has enabled him to represent a space in-between Western and Eastern Europe, constituting a malleable heartland within and across borders depending on context -a changing heartland to be defended against the threats of dominant powers.It is suggested that the RRP narratives of Orbán that include Ukraine and Russia are not about choosing a Western or a Russian camp, but about placing himself in the camp of the people whose heartland is rearranged with a great flexibility.The aim thereby is both to attract a domestic audience and to secure foreign alliances with political forces in Western and Eastern countries.This is conceivable, because the DNA of populist politicians is the 'logic of articulation' (Laclau 2005, 33) between antagonistic groups and not so much the fixed identity and spatial imprint of each group to be opposed.
The hypothesis is tested by considering all texts (statements and speeches) pronounced or signed by Orbán and including the words Ukraine or Ukrainian (as a noun or adjective) and/or Russia or Russian (again as a noun or adjective) from 2014 (following the first Russian-controlled aggression of Ukraine) to 2022, and available on two official Hungarian websites: https://miniszterelnok.hu/ and https://kormany.hu/.The English translations of the communications available on these websites are used in the analysis.All the texts considered were produced between 16 June 2014 and 03 April 2022, the last text considered being the one following the victory of Orbán's party (Fidesz) in the Hungarian national ballot, and securing his fourth consecutive election as prime minister since 2010.In total, 169 texts making reference to Ukraine or Ukrainian and/or Russia or Russian were identified and collected, representing nearly a quarter of all the items available on the two websites (719 online speeches and statements counted for the period).Each text can be composed of different segments; that is, paragraphs or series of consecutive sentences that are cohesive in terms of argumentation.In total, 259 textual segments were isolated with a reference to Ukraine or Ukrainian and/or Russia or Russian in the 169 texts.The following information was encoded in a database at the level of each segment to approach the potential chameleonic nature of the Orbán's discourse and its context from a quantitative perspective: the date on which the discourse was circulated (the temporal context), the main type of addressees (the audience context), the topics around which the argument was constructed (the thematic context), the presence of RRP narratives together with the attitude towards Ukraine and Russia in these narratives, the identity of opposed in-groups and out-groups, and two more-specific issues (a reference to Vladimir Putin and the use of history).Each main category was defined as follows after carrying out an overview of the texts over the eight-year period.
-Date: year, month and day -Main addressees of speeches and statements: It is possible to distinguish texts directed to three main distinctive audiences.First, Hungarians who are mainly located in Hungary.Specifically, texts produced for Hungarian mass media and all the speeches made during conferences targeting exclusively Hungarians with no foreign visitors referenced in the title of the speech and/or greeted in the introduction.Second, the Hungarian diaspora, which means texts produced during conferences targeting Hungarians abroad (e.g., the plenary session of the Hungarian diaspora council), events held in neighbouring countries for the Hungarian diaspora (e.g., the yearly Bálványos Summer Open University and Student Camp in Romania) and interviews with foreign mass media targeting this diaspora in neighbouring countries.Third, a public including non-Hungarians, meaning foreign private decision-makers (e.g., businesses investing in Hungary), public executives, and political leaders and organisations mentioned as present in the room or mentioned in the title of the discourse, as well as international press conferences and interviews with non-Hungarian mass media.Messages produced in these foreign-related contexts are also circulated among Hungarians, but Orbán is aware that what he says will be directly paid attention by a foreign audience of world leaders, such as Putin, Merkel and NATO media representatives located in the countries of these leaders.Each RRP textual segment was encoded as directed mainly towards Hungarians, the Hungarian diaspora or a mixed public including a non-Hungarian foreign audience.
-Topics: Orbán's discourse that makes reference to Ukraine or Ukrainian and/or Russia or Russian was structured around five main issues over the eight years: Economics (including access to energy resources).Territorial sovereignty (all the questions related to the territorial integrity of state, the legitimacy of states to decide freely their international alliances and the military situation from the war to the international defence alliances to preserve or claim territorial sovereignty).Minorities (Hungarian diaspora and refugees fleeing regions at war including Ukrainians, but also non-European refugees/migrants).Cultural and democratic norms (the values promoted or disregarded by Orbán, such as freedom, democracy, liberalism, Christianity and communism).Other (other relevant topics not related to the previous ones).Different topics can co-exist in the same textual segments.
-Radical-right populism (RRP): Segments were encoded as circulating RRP as long as they presented ideational and/or socio-cultural elements attached to populism; that is, opposition between people, elite and others, the promotion of native in-groups and authoritarian policies, and/or the use of the low side of political communication to address international affairs (Ostiguy 2017;Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017).
-Out-groups vs. in-groups: The first out-group includes all the entities associated with the West.This can be the European Union and its public bodies (e.g., The Commission) -which can also be termed 'Brussels' or simply 'Europe' -NATO, Western countries (e.g., Germany), businesses coming from Western countries, or more generally 'the West' and 'Westerners' quoted as such in the text.Some of these entities are not always scapegoated as 'out-groups', especially nation states and their political representatives (e.g.Italy).The second out-group comprises non-Western countries, in particular three dominant stakeholders often quoted alongside one another: Russia, China and Turkey.The third out-group is the 'other', which brings together a diversity of groups less frequently mentioned (e.g., the migrants and the Muslims).The main in-group is the 'Hungarians', named as a cohesive cultural group or a citizenry, or a part of the cultural group (e.g., Hungarian workers).It is followed by the 'Europeans' named in the same ways.The third in-group is the 'other', a broader ingroup made up of different and less-frequently mentioned entities, such as Christians.Different out-groups and in-groups can be mentioned in the same textual segments.
-The attitudes of Orbán towards Ukraine and Russia: Three main types of attitudes were encoded.First, negativity/distance, meaning an overall negative or distant vision of the country, its leaders, its government, its internal situation or policies, and/or its foreign policies in terms of political, military, economic and cultural issues, today or in the past.Second, positivity/proximity, as an overall positive vision of these countries on the same issues.Third, a neutral attitude, which can involve merely a reference to the countries (e.g., 'This year we received the Russian president') or a mixed vision of or attitudes towards these countries (e.g., the condemnation of the Russian aggression of Ukraine that is matched with a refusal to impose economic sanctions against Russia).Each RRP textual segment was encoded as structured mainly around one of the three attitudes (negative, positive or neutral).
-Other more specific information was encoded following the overall reading of a series of texts.First, any reference to Putin in the text, in order to explore any tendency of Orbán to name the Russian leader behind the tensions and chaos in Ukraine over the past years; the Hungarian prime minister often being presented as an ally of the Russian president (Novak and Higgins 2022).Second, the use of history as a source of reference to mention Ukraine and Russia, as Hungary was included in the Russian-controlled soviet bloc fought against by the libertarian Orbán early in his political carrier.
All the above-mentioned encoding was used to explore the potentially chameleonic aspect of Orbán's narratives in-between Western liberal and Russian illiberal camps and for the people's camp and heartland when making reference to Ukraine and Russia in terms of content.This analysis was followed by a complementary discourse analysis.The decision was made to use the Discursive Historical Approach (DHA) of Critical Discourse Analysis, as DHA enables researchers to explore the context-based sequences of dissimilation (otherness) and assimilation (sameness) constitutive of the people-centred ingroup vs. out-groups antagonism that is characteristic of populist discourse (De Cillia, Reisigl, and Wodak 2013;Reisigl and Wodak 2016;Van Dijk 1998, 2013).The objective is to investigate two key discursive elements of texts, helping to understand their reference to, on the one hand, the heartland, its people and their representatives, and on the other, their opponents: the predication of opposed in-groups and out-groups (that is, their qualifying attributes) and the argumentation made around seemingly common sense topoi (Wodak 2001(Wodak , 2015;;Wodak and Rheindorf 2022), legitimising Orbán's spatial representation of the international situation including Ukraine and/or Russia.

Orbán and the Western Radical-Right Populist Janus Face: Cultivating a Time-Deepened and Audience-Driven Sense of Frustration in the Changing Heartland of Europe
The quantitative and qualitative analyses of texts circulated by Orbán and mentioning Ukraine and/or Russia help us to appreciate the spatial representation of Europe by a RRP executive leader based on his defence of an evolving heartland.What matters for him is the description of a European space defined by the tension between a frustrated/deluded people rooted in a constantly rearranged 'somewhere' and an inefficient/illegitimate outgroup of dominant states -international organisations, generally Western ones -representing the borderless elites that put pressure on this somewhere and its people.His narratives are based on a European 'trans-national populism' (De Cleen et al. 2019;Kuiper and Moffitt 2020;Lamour 2020Lamour , 2022d;;Lamour and Carls 2022;McDonnell and Werner 2019), in which it is the 'logic of articulation' (Laclau 2005, 33) between interchangeable and antagonistic groups that matters, rather than the defence of a fixed people and its territory.By phrasing this trans-national populist vision, Orbán shows that the chameleonic dimension of populism (Taggart 2000) can concern choosing a viewpoint of a changing heartland for a changing audience at a changing time, but with a relatively permanent scope: the long-term hollowing-out of Western alliances from their liberal normative values to address foreign and indirectly Hungarian affairs.The two consecutive content and discursive analyses help us to explore this phenomenon.

Eight Years on the Eastern Front: The Multi-Faceted Approach of Orbán to Two Neighbouring States in Conflict
First, as mentioned by Šimunjak and Caliandro (2019), whether populist or otherwise, what is not said in foreign affairs narratives sends a message as important as what is said.Over the eight selected years, Orbán clearly wants to send a message that Ukraine and Russia need to be two separate issues, which he does by avoiding any mention of the two countries together.He mentions Ukraine and Russia together in only 18% of textual segments (47 units), although the topics in most texts are related to both countries and to the Russian aggression in Ukraine (the terrible situation in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia).It is interesting to note that nearly 30% of all texts mentioning Ukraine and Russia together (14 units) were produced in the first months of 2022, just before and during the second and direct incidence of Russian aggression.There is a temporal context (open war and the Western alliance's strong reaction against it), which makes it less possible for Orbán not to evoke Russia in reference to Ukraine.Second, the proportion of texts including some reference to Ukraine and/or Russia including a RRP connotation is relatively similar when we consider the whole period, at around half of the total number of units.However, this proportion can vary depending on years and countries (Table 1).
Orbán could be critical, neutral or supportive of Ukraine and Russia between 2014 and 2022 when he developed his radical-right populist narratives.The positioning concerning the two countries differs over time, and also depending on the targeted public.The 'audience' context turns out to be central to approach a populist discourse that is often described as chameleonic (Taggart 2000).It is clearly when the Hungarian Prime Minister speaks to his broad Hungarian public that he is the most neutral over time when making reference to Russia, while his criticism of Ukraine is the greatest when the  Ukraine is represented from a critical perspective in 9 textual segments with a RRP connotation addressed to Hungarians.These 9 textual segments constitute 45% of all textual segments with a RRP connotation addressed to Hungarians and making references to Ukraine.Ukraine is represented from a critical perspective in 5 textual segments with a RRP connotation addressed to Hungarians when Russia is also mentioned in these segments.These 5 textual segments constitute 36% of all textual segments with a RRP connotation addressed to Hungarians and making references to Ukraine when Russia is also mentioned in these segments.
content is directed towards the Hungarian diaspora and without reference to Russia.Ukraine and Russia are more similarly considered in terms of a neutral, critical and supportive perspective when there is a foreign audience in Orbán's public (Table 2).The criticism of and distancing from Russia is also strongly associated with references to history.Some 75% of the textual segments with an RRP narrative and a criticism of Russia involve mention of it as a bygone past enemy and oppressive power, with a notable recurrence in texts between 2014 and 2022.Criticism of Ukraine is more embedded in today's reality, with a concentration of texts from the 2017-2019 period.The direct support of Russia is mainly portrayed in terms of economic deals over the eight-year period, while support for Ukraine is concentrated in 2015-2016 in reference to its inclusion in the European Union.The treatment of Russia is stable, whereas that of Ukraine changes.
The RRP antagonism developed by Orbán when making references to Ukraine and Russia clearly positions his narratives beyond the limits of Hungary and places it in relation to trans-national populism (De Cleen et al. 2019;Kuiper and Moffitt 2020;McDonnell and Werner 2019).The most negatively presented out-group is the West, which regroups multilateral institutions and most often the EU ones (notably the scapegoated 'Brussels' symbolising multilateral institutions taking decisions for EU nation states), EU Western countries such as the Netherlands, Western businesses and large companies competing with Hungarian and Central European ones, and lastly Western liberalism in terms of cultural and democratic norms to be expanded everywhere.The West is not only targeted when texts are addressed to Orbán's domestic public, but also to foreign audiences, especially in Central Europe with some references to Poland.Central Europe includes different regions and states depending on historical periods, the stakeholders defining this area and the countries where these stakeholders are located (Okey 1992;Szűcs et al. 2022).Above all, Orbán clearly wants his messages to be heard in a Central Europe defined as the countries that joined the European Union following the collapse of the Socialist bloc (Czechia, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary) and where radical right populist parties can join forces (Kazharski 2018(Kazharski , 2023;;Lamour 2022a).Orbán is against the liberal West and especially so when Russia is mentioned in his speeches, making him -as is sometimes said-one of 'Putin's men' in the EU (Novak and Higgins 2022).However, he also recognises the right of the PiS (his Polish ally) to disagree with the attitude to hold regarding Russia, as Poland is a crucial ally of Hungary in preventing the implementation of article 7 of the EU Treaty against Hungary (Pech and Scheppele 2017).As a typical RRP leader, Orbán presents the West from the perspective of a scapegoated elite, at times incompetent, irresponsible, illegitimate or keen on developing conspiracies against the interests of the people.However, Orbán's people, portrayed as frustrated by the West when making reference to Russia and Ukraine, are not simply composed of Hungarians, but also Europeans.These are often Central Europeans, who are viewed as hard working people disregard by the West, as well as other Europeans, often belonging to the most popular grass-roots population, for example European farmers.The heartland for Orbán is the primary economic fabric of Europe (fields and factories) and its workers, or the nation and the family in which this workforce is located, together with their representatives scapegoated by the EU; that is, RRP leaders.The presence of 'Hungarians' as a people is always strong, and especially when Orbán targets the Hungarian diaspora and mentions Ukraine to this public.This connection can be explained by the context of the controversial Ukrainian language law, promoting Ukrainian to the detriment of the minority languages in this country.Hungarian speakers number as many as the Greek, Bulgarian, Polish and Romanian ones in Ukraine; that is, less than 1% of the population (Venice Commission 2019).However, Orbán's Hungary distinguished itself from other EU countries by promising retaliation against Ukraine if the situation did not change (Kropp and Aasland 2021;Reuters 2019), hence his reference to a 'we' Hungarians when he mentioned Ukraine to the Hungarian diaspora (Table 3).The current narratives of Orbán towards the Hungarian diaspora and in relation to Ukraine show the importance of the Carpathian Basin heartland to frame an antagonistic discourse involving the imagined national community of the Magyars (Balogh 2021;Balogh et al. 2022 Lamour andVarga 2020;Szalai and Kopper 2020).
Orbán's antagonistic discourse, implying a spatial representation and justifying his policies at home and abroad, is organised around two main topics: the economy -including the access to energy resources -and the territorial sovereignty, notably to condemn the war in Ukraine, as well as to condemn the power of international organisations and NGOs over sovereign states such as Hungary and Russia.These two topics are followed by the issue of minorities and cultural and democratic norms, generally to denounce liberal Western values.The economic issue is particularly emphasised in the textual segments in which he mentions Russia for a public including a foreign audience (68% of units) from a specific perspective: sanctions against Russia are a bad policy.It is in this foreign audience that support needs to be found to curb the sanction strategy against Orbán's Russian ally, or at least for him to show Putin that he is promoting his cause for the good of Russia and Hungary among Western countries.The territorial sovereignty is in particular presented in relation to Ukraine and Russia together when Orbán targets Hungarians, whereas the issue of minorities is only prioritised in a high proportion of texts in which he represents Ukraine for the Hungarian diaspora in relation to the Ukrainian language law.Lastly, the Hungarian prime minister uses the greatest proportion of textual segments on cultural and democratic norms in relation to  The West is mentioned as an out-group in 10 textual segments with a RRP connotation, making reference to Ukraine and addressed to Hungarians.These 10 textual segments constitute 50% of all textual segments with a RRP connotation making reference to Ukraine and addressed to Hungarians.Many out-groups and in-groups can be mentioned in each textual segment.
Russia and for the Hungarian public sometimes in order to portray the idea that the West should not try to impose its liberal values on Russia, which is a strong and successful country (Table 4).

By Jupiter! From the Land of the Eastern Surviving Bear to the Possible Transcarpathian Pastures of a Hungarian Ox
A discursive historical approach (DHA) to Orbán's narratives is a key frame to see how flexible the predication associated to the in-groups and out-groups can be, as well as the common sense argumentation or topos around which his RRP narratives are structured (Wodak 2001(Wodak , 2015;;Wodak and Rheindorf 2022).As shown previously, the West and its various components comprise the standing out-group, while the in-group is more flexible.However, this does not mean that Orbán totally rejects the West when setting his populist antagonism.He can present himself as a champion of the West, both to better criticise it in favour of Ukraine in front of a central European audience in 2014-2016, or to threaten Ukraine, especially when addressing the Hungarian diaspora in 2017-2019.He shows that RRP leaders can make use of different crises to secure their visibility and centrality in the public sphere (Biancalana et al. 2023;Lamour and Carls 2022;Moffitt 2015Moffitt , 2016)).Currently, the issue is the same (the integration of Ukraine in Western alliances), but showing Orbán from a different perspective: as the representative of the oppressed people and their heartland.The economy is a topic mentioned in 11 textual segments with a RRP connotation, making reference to Ukraine and addressed to Hungarians.These 11 textual segments constitute 55% of all textual segments with a RRP connotation making reference to Ukraine and addressed to Hungarians.Many topics can be mentioned in each textual segment.
The first text presented helps us to grasp Orbán's supportive vision of Ukraine, but elements associated with other texts used over the eight years also show his remarkable flexibility.What characterises the West is the negatively-presented and morally-lacking economic attributes.The key attributes of the old Western Europe are wealth and selfishness.It is metaphorically scapegoated as a 'bourgeois would be' by a working-place person (The Netherlands 'is rolling in money'), while the heartland dominated by the West is located in a blurred Central Europe over time.In this regard, yesterday's frustrated 'us' heartland is today's dynamic Visegrad countries (V4) now included in the EU (Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia), while Ukraine is not 'us', but it is today's in-group heartland going through what 'we' experienced within an overall topos of economic advantage for the EU (if we let Ukraine let in, Europe will be economically prosperous, as proven by the V4).One can also see in this text the long-term tendency of Orbán not to name the real, powerful and military stakeholder behind the suffering of Ukraine when it decides to turn to the West, meaning Russia.An armed conflict is mentioned, but with no enemy being named.In parallel, Orbán reflects on two connected issues that have made him well-known in the EU since 2015: migration (Bíró-Nagy 2022) ('Europe needs the Ukrainians in Ukraine') and the EU unanimity rule ('These are anomalies which must be remedied').His sanctioning by the European council with Article 7 of the EU Treaty for his radical-right migration policy and overall illiberal measures is prevented because of this unanimity rule and the alliance between at least two RRP governments in Europe (Poland and Hungary) (Pech and Scheppele 2017).However, Orbán can nevertheless condemn this rule when the attribute of the targeted Western enemy is wealth ('the Netherlands rolling in money') and when the issue concerns free trade, while making the point that Ukrainians must stay at home; mobility has its limits, even for Ukrainians.One can also see that the Hungarian leader avoids mentioning the fact that Thierry Baudet, the Dutch right-wing populist leader, was a key figure in the Netherlands against the agreement between Ukraine and the EU (Holligan 2016).Orbán does not want to aggravate a member of his political family: When the EU did not want to admit us, and we had to fight to be let in, they told us the same things that they are now telling Ukraine: we would cost them money [. . .].And now look at the reality [. ..] if we Central Europeans -the countries of the V4 -were not members of the European Union, there would be no economic growth in the EU, only stagnation and decline.[. ..]The same will happen to Ukraine [. ..]. Therefore we shall always stand up for Ukraine's accession to the European Union.[. ..]You must be aware -as you could see it on television -of the risk which Ukraine took when it decided to move closer to the European Union three years ago.The country is still paying the military price for this.I am convinced that -having promised three years ago that Ukraine can advance towards the European Union -it is also our moral duty to grant that privilege.[. ..]Europe needs Ukraine, it needs the citizens of Ukraine in Europe, and it also needs the Ukrainians living in Ukraine, who will be able to contribute to the performance of the overall European economy.[. ..]It is also insupportable that one of Europe's richest nations, the Netherlands -which, compared with us, is rolling in money -vetoed a strong free trade agreement between the European Union and Ukraine, while the other 27 EU Member States supported it.These are anomalies which must be remedied.(Hungarian government 2016) Whilst well-known in Europe as having been condemned many times for the collapse of minority rights in his own country, Orbán can also present himself as an EU guardian of the normative values and rights of minorities.This is illustrated by the text below, following the decision of the Ukrainian state to promote a language law considered as detrimental for minority languages (Kropp and Aasland 2021;Kulyk 2019;Venice Commission 2019).Once again, he speaks in the name of the oppressed people, a transnational ingroup composed of different nationalities and a wider 'us' of Europeans (whose heartland includes a part of Ukraine) and opposed to another people -'Ukrainians' -around the topos of threat (if Ukrainians threaten our minorities, we can threaten them).He warns against Ukrainians having access to the West by qualifying the threatening policies of Ukraine towards its EU diasporas (Hungarians being diluted into a larger European 'we' of diasporas whose heartland is located in Ukraine).By doing so, Orbán wants to show his legitimacy to intervene in the future of Ukrainian foreign policies through his 'diaspora' agenda used in the long term in the neighbouring region of Hungary (Lesińska and Héjj 2021).It is not the use of military threat in the way a strong and autocratic state such as Russia can implement, but the mobilisation of potential veto rights that minor states can freely use within liberal and international organisations.Orbán mentions Russia on this occasion, but again to mitigate Russian aggression ('a border conflict with Russia').This time, it is not the selfish West that is morally wrong, but Ukraine.The Hungarian prime minister repeats this threat to his 'Ukrainian friends' many times during this period, even to prevent Ukraine from entering NATO.He disagrees with the veto right of the Netherlands 'rolling in money' against Ukraine's integration in the EU, but he will exert his veto rights in the name of the oppressed European minorities and their heartland based in Ukraine ('not only Hungarians'): With regard to Ukraine, at the moment we're trying to create a partnership among those countries whose minorities there have seen their rights curtailed: not only Hungarians, but also Romanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Poles and Slovaks.So we're trying to create a kind of common EU position which will make the Ukrainians understand.We don't want to threaten them or punish them.We just want to make them realise that they can't rely on anyone anywhere in the world other than the European Union, and that while they're at war with Russia on their eastern border -or at least while they have a border conflict with Russia on their eastern border -and their economy is in trouble, some things are simply impossible.While they're orienting towards us, while they want to live together with us, while they want to cooperate with us, it's simply not possible for them to reduce any level of protection of human rights which has already been achieved: to withdraw and curtail the rights of minorities -any minorities, not only Hungarians.[. ..]Those who take away rights, the rights of minorities, can't get any closer to the EU, and we will be unable to support their aspirations.We're asking our Ukrainian friends to understand this, and to seek a solution to this situation.(Hungarian government 2017a) Orbán can sometimes portray a somewhat negative vision of Ukraine, similar to that mentioned in relation to non-European and Muslim countries where migrants have been scapegoated for electoral gains in Hungary (Bíró-Nagy 2022; Lamour and Varga 2020), and therefore well before the controversial Ukrainian law on languages.The attributes of Ukraine can be compared with third world countries approached by RRP Western leaders: 'unstable', economically not viable and dependent on foreign aid.With regard to the latter, Hungary is presented as the most generous country in terms of assistance, even if it does not boast about it; the attribute of the Hungarian 'we' being its positive modesty -'the Hungarians don't like to help while shouting the fact out to the world.We like to help, but we don't like to brag about it' (Hungarian government 2014b).Orbán uses the same type of Hungarian charitable help argument when he makes reference to his support for poor Muslim countries, where migrants are nevertheless scapegoated by him (Hungarian government 2019a, 2019b).In terms of spatial representation, Ukraine is also paraphrased negatively as 'something' needed between Hungary and Russia, in front of Hungarian diplomats (Hungarian government 2015b), or a 'buffer zone' that is imagined as potentially going back to Russian control, in front of the Hungarian diaspora (Hungarian government 2018).At the same time, Orbán advances in a populist manner his interest in a more fragmented Ukraine, indirectly securing a Western Hungarian goal not far different from the Eastern Russian one: regional autonomy for the area of native speakers and increased power over it.The following text addressed to the Hungarian diplomatic corps evocates in a rather undiplomatic way his vision of a less-united Ukraine, in which the Hungarian 'we' attributes are associated with the insecure and powerless people ('we are [. ..] cursed', 'We fret over what we can and cannot say and how far is too far'), or strong but occupying a low position through the use of an antic myth and metaphor (the 'ox') in relation to an Italian colleague making reference to South Tyrol as a source for thoughts for the future of Ukraine.This time, Russia or even Putin is replaced by other undefined or ethereal entities ('what others do' and 'Jupiter').Orbán also does not mention Transcarpathia, which represents the subliminal Hungarian diasporic heartland that could interest the Hungarian ox in the text: my worthy Italian counterpart not only signed an agreement on a billion-dollar investment fund but also announced that there is a need for autonomy in Ukraine, on the model of South Tyrol.I merely wish to indicate where our room for manoeuvre is.When we speak about what we can and cannot do, and we imagine it in our own heads, we feel the curse of Hungary's history: we are not strengthened by it, but cursed.We fret over what we can and cannot say and how far is too far; but when we look at what others do, it is suddenly clear that our room for manoeuvre is much wider than we previously imagined.It does not follow from this, however, that I propose you should start talking about South Tyrol yourselves, because 'What Jupiter may do, the ox may not'.But even the ox should be allowed to think about what is happening in the world and understand it, and then the ox may see where his limits lie.(Hungarian government 2015b) In the textual segments, Orbán makes direct reference to Russia as a central stakeholder from a different perspective, but always by hiding his ties with the key man in the Kremlin: Vladimir Putin.The name of the Russian president is quoted in less than 8% of all textual segments making reference to Russia (16 units) and only 5% of them including an RRP narrative .Russia is presented in two main international geopolitical entities.First, as one of main states eager to control Eurasia, together with other competitors such as China, Turkey, Germany, the US and more rarely Europe -the 'big boys' as Orbán likes to call them.By making references to these major states, he defines equidistance between his Western democratic allies and his Eastern autocratic partners.The attachment to the West (the US and Europe) for Orbán is not more important than increased cooperation with powerful Eastern countries, but an equivalent requirement dictated by what he mentions as the territorial 'fate' of the Hungarian heartland to be surrounded by dominant powers.In this situation, the small Hungary must determine its security and prosperity based on the acknowledgement of the interests of the 'big boys' in a 'successful' Hungary.
Orbán claims to be the representative of a Hungary that must accept its fate, and as a grave leader who is as cursed, as are his people, by its geographical position and being surrounded by dominant states.However, he can also use the low discursive style associated with populism (Ostiguy 2017) to make reference in a jocular way to NATO as a way 'to keep the Russians out and Germans down' in Europe during international events (Hungarian government 2014a, 2015b 2015a), and to draw parallels between Trump, Putin and Merkel on the one side, and Hitler, Stalin and Marlene Dietrich on the other, based on a Polish joke among the Hungarian diaspora in Romania (Hungarian government 2018).He can do so while putting forwards an indirect and rather disturbing vision of Russia and Turkey, his autocratic partners during the 2022 commemoration speech for the 1848-1849 Hungarian revolution and war of independence.This speech shows the typical popular dimension of RRP discourse, which breaks with the normative approach to international affairs (Šimunjak and Caliandro 2019).It is structured around two interrelated topoi: the topos of number (there are few of us and powerful countries around) and the topos of cunning (if they are more powerful than us, we had better be clever).The topos of cunning adds something to the topos of number through the use of metaphors.The interaction is not between an in-group of Hungarians defending their heartland from other powerful out-groups of people, but between human beings with positive attributes (cunning) and wild animals to be neutralised, two of them emblematic of Russia (the bear) and Turkey (the wolf).It is not certain whether Orbán would have mentioned the bear controlled by a ring in his nose and a chain in the presence of Putin, who he likes to meet each year.Nevertheless, on a day of national commemoration and with the Russian aggression in neighbouring Ukraine, nothing is impossible.Nevertheless, Russia is always included in a broader geopolitical wilderness where the threats can come from anywhere for the Hungarian Homo Sapiens.We should note a difference between the (German) beast and the other ones.In the list, Germany is initially shown as the most noble of beasts (the lion), much as Angela Merkel was previously paralleled by the only charming person of the trio, Marlene Dietrich; with Orbán constantly developing a love-hate relationship with Germany in his discourse over the years: Across the world there are 15 million of us.We live on the horizons of more powerful countries: Germans, Russians, Turks -and, most recently, Americans.But this is no reason to be weak of heart, nor to be fearful -and it is certainly no reason for surrender.Strength is not simply a matter of muscle: you cannot wrestle a lion to submission, but you can throw sand in its eyes; a bear will always have a stronger embrace, but you can put a ring in its nose and lead it on a chain; you can lure a wolf into a pit; and we know that you can make stew from wild boar.(Hungarian government 2022b) The second and more frequent presence of Russia in Orbán's RRP discourse can be paralleled to what he said in reference to Ukraine when championing for its EU integration.His RRP discourse is structured around an attack on the West, but from the perspective of an illiberal heartland.By circulating this second type of narrative, he does not want to cut Hungary's ties with the Western system of alliances (EU and NATO), but stresses the aggressive dimension of the liberal democratic Western alliances, especially in Europe.Russia, like Hungary and its people in other texts, is presented as the victim of these Western liberal values, used by a negatively-defined out-group of Western countries, institutions and authorities that are presented as having two hidden agendas: an imperial one (to increase their dominance over sovereign states such as Russia and Hungary) and a more basic economic one (to pretext the presence of liberal democratic values to prevent Hungary from trading with Russia while large and/or wealthy Western liberal states do so).The text below is an example allowing us to deconstruct Orbán belonging to the same illiberal sphere of Putin's Russia.The main predication of Russia is relatively positive, a cumulative resilience approached in its most extreme dimension (the survival), while the West is the designated out-group that is negatively presented on two occasions through the topos of reality.The West is the aggressor of Russia, but its European component is also shown by its weakness (lack of self-confidence and courage) in relation to its independence from a power often criticised by Orbán, but not always directly mentioned: the United States (the possible 'wild boar' to be stewed in the previous mentioned text and the country of 'Uncle George' [Soros] and his 'army' [NGOs] as he stated during the last congress of his party before the 2022 national election (Hungarian government 2021).Orbán professes a new West that would be an illiberal and militarily independent European Union showing its military strength or making deals with Russia, the new 'land of opportunity' for the Hungarian prime minister.Orbán includes himself in a feeble European 'we' when speaking to his Hungarian compatriots, but in order to better criticise Europe as it stands, yet with so many concluding negative textual formulations that it can be difficult to follow him: Here is Russia.We have Russia, which -let us be honest -has survived Western attempts to quarantine it and attempts at regime change.It has survived low oil prices, it has survived sanctions, and it has survived the free, non-partisan, internal activities of NGOs -which can hardly be described as pro-government, and which obviously came about without external interference!It has survived all that, and there it is.It is therefore unreasonableand particularly unreasonable in Europe -to ignore the power and the opportunity that Russia represents.This would naturally require more European self-confidence, and we should be able to honestly claim -but probably the reason we don't is because it's not truethat we Europeans can defend ourselves militarily, without external assistance.But we don't have the courage to say that, because it's not true.(Hungarian government 2017b)

Concluding Discussion: Understanding RRP Geopolitics in Europe with Orbán and a Rubik's Cube
Not all Orbán's texts since 2014 making references to Ukraine and Russia can be qualified as RRP ones.The Hungarian prime minister can be against economic sanctions for Russia and military support for Ukraine, but also favourable towards Ukraine's integration into the European Union, without structuring a people-centred in-group opposed to a scapegoated West, its liberal values and its dominant stakeholders.In parallel, one can note that his cooperation with Putin's Russia over the past years was not the privilege of the Hungarian RRP regime and its leader.London has been portrayed as 'Londongrad', with the influx of Russian oligarchs greeted with great interest.Ex-prime ministers of Western democratic states coming from mainstream liberal parties even went to work directly for large Russian businesses, more or less controlled by the Kremlin; from Matteo Renzi in Italy to François Fillon in France, without forgetting Gerhard Schröder in Germany who refused to quit his post at the Rosneft Russian energy company for months after the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022.Consequently, how can we characterise RRP geopolitics from a content and discourse analysis of texts associated with a Hungarian Prime Minister making references to Ukraine and Russia over the past years?
The current analysis has shown that RRP geopolitics involve putting chameleonic populist thinking into space, by representing an evolving heartland and its people within and across state borders, in-between East and West and located at different spatial scales (regional, national and European).This heartland remains always dominated by a main target -the West.One may easily jump to the conclusion that Orbán's objective would be the death of existing Western alliances, in the sense of Catho's leitmotiv Carthāgō dēlenda est (Carthage must be destroyed).However, his narratives shows he is aware of the utility of these Western alliances in terms of wealth and security for Hungary.Orbán appreciates Putin for what he represents in terms of illiberal values and access to cheap energy resources, but he knows about the possible Westward territorial appetite of the Russian 'bear' in the hands of Putin.Ukraine is a useful 'something'/'buffer zone' in his representation of this country.The Hungarian prime minister then represents a geopolitical order in which it is less the fixed territorial camps (Western liberal and Russian illiberal) that matter, than the fixed defence of the people's camp.The contours of this camp can be changed to attract Orbán's fellow Hungarian citizens (diaspora included) or his fellow European state executives, be it Russia or EU allies; the latter being central to offering protection from the potential implementation against Hungary of Article 7 of the EU Treaty.Orbán knows the tightrope he must walk and the risk of falling into a Western or a Russian camp and losing the accumulated advantages he has gained and has used to secure his constant re-election since 2010.
His portrayed European heartland is like the ever-changing, patchy face of a Rubik's cube in which can be found all or some elements of six faces or spaces of antagonism crosscutting state borders.First, the economic space, in which the global liberal elite frustrates the embedded good workers and farmers.Second, the energy space, in which the good people want the best deal for their home, prevented by the sanctions of the West against Russia.Third, the military space, in which the good people are in favour of peace while war is raging in Ukraine.Fourth, the cultural/societal space, with a European people based on rooted, traditional and Christian-based communities, while the global elite wants to promote other societal liberal norms.Fifth, the diasporic space, in which kin-communities are suffering from the repression of a Ukrainian power.Sixth, the political space organised around the victimised elected representatives of the people and the suppressive and illegitimate global powers such as the scapegoated 'Brussels'.By representing this patchy heartland, Orbán tends to reprocess and invert a long-term foreign policy of Germany: The Ostpolitik.This German policy was framed in the late 1960s by the socialist SPD Party with the Eastern socialist-ruled countries of the soviet bloc, in order to develop 'a change through rapprochement' (Wandel durch Annäherung) and to undermine in the long term the Eastern autocratic regimes.Orbán has designed a Wandel durch Annäherung by promoting more cooperation with Russia, and especially a 'change through trade' (Wandel durch Handel).However, this Ostpolitik is associated with the undermining of the Western liberal political regime in Hungary and in Western democracies with the financial/media support of other RRP leaders; for example, Marine Le Pen in France, whose last two presidential campaigns were successively sponsored indirectly by Putin and Orbán.Future comparative research will be needed to investigate the Hungarian illiberal Ostpolitik and its continued acceptance by major Western liberal states, such as Germany.The German government has always been somewhat conciliatory regarding Orbán's Hungary, which has become the hinterland of the powerful German car production industry.The German centre-right CDU/CSU party has even been seen as preventing the exclusion of Orbán's political group (Fidesz) from the centre-right European People's Party in the European Parliament, in spite of the international condemnation of his illiberal policies at home (Henley 2021).Nevertheless, a new German Ostpolitik might be started by the green-liberal-socialist coalition; an Ostpolitik less business-friendly towards the destroyers of the liberal democracy in Europe.In the coming years, Orbán may continue to parallel Germany with a lion, but he may not be able to parallel the German Chancellor with Marlene Dietrich.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Table 1 .
The presence of Ukraine and/or Russia in Orban's discourse between 2014 and 2022.Ukraine or Ukrainian(s) as name or adjective.One of them mentioned Ukraine/Ukrainian(s) within a radical right populist narrative.The years 2014 and 2022 were only partially covered.

Table 2 .
The Orban's attitude towards Ukraine and Russia in RRP textual segments.

Table 3 .
The out-groups and in-groups defined by Orban when making reference to Ukraine and Russia in RRP textual segments.

Table 4 .
The topics represented by Orban when making reference to Ukraine and Russia in RRP textual segments.