The Hungarian government has released an excerpt from a video of the interrogation of a former IT specialist from the opposition Tisza party. The government claims the man admitted that Ukraine attempted to recruit him, although no such admission appears in the recording.

Source: Hungarian newspaper 24.hu, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The nearly hour-long video of the former Tisza IT specialist's interrogation was published on a government YouTube channel.

The 19-year-old man, referred to as Gundalf, says that when Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began he felt "deep sympathy" for civilians, which prompted him to join a community of experts working to prevent Russian cyberattacks on Ukrainian IT systems. He adds that he later ended his involvement after the activity was "radicalised" and supposedly might have been directed against non-Russian targets, which could have indirectly harmed Hungary.

Asked whether he has foreign contacts, Gundalf says he is studying information security engineering at a NATO-accredited cyber security centre in Estonia.

He also recalls visiting the Estonian embassy in Budapest but says he cannot remember who he spoke to there.

The next part of the video appears to have been recorded later, as Gundalf is wearing different clothes. Gundalf says that since his last conversation with the investigator, he has "thought about things a lot" and believes he may have encountered an attempt to recruit him.

In this context, he recalls a visit he made to Kyiv in 2023 for volunteer purposes, where a meeting was organised for members of the IT community.

The contact person was a man who introduced himself as Davydov. According to the IT specialist, he looked like a "stereotypical gangster". Davydov supposedly suggested that they join a team to help Ukraine counter cyberattacks. Gundalf assumed the man "wanted to involve" the participants in something.

After the interrogation video was published, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán claimed the former Tisza IT specialist had admitted he was recruited by the Ukrainians.

Tisza leader Péter Magyar described this as an organised intelligence operation directed against his party.

"It's the story of a 19-year-old man who took part in NATO-accredited cyber security training and therefore also visited Estonia, a NATO member state. It turns out that even if there were attempts to recruit him, he rejected them," Magyar wrote.

Background: Earlier this week, Orbán accused Ukraine of "infiltrating spies" into the opposition Tisza party team and demanded they be "sent home".

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