A false claim that Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar plans to bring back military conscription in Hungary has spread online and been linked by researchers to a widespread Russian disinformation campaign.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

The allegation, shared on X and Facebook alongside an image mimicking a news broadcast, claims that Magyar told voters at a campaign rally that “Hungary needs conscription to get ready for war.”

One post on X claimed that “Magyar thinks forcing 90,000 young men into army boots will solve Hungary’s problems.”

However, there is no evidence that Magyar and his pro-European Tisza party plan to introduce mandatory military conscription.

In fact, his party’s manifesto explicitly rules this out, stating that, if elected, a Tisza government “will not reintroduce conscription” either after the election or any time in the future.

The manifesto also rules out sending Hungarian troops to Ukraine or other conflicts, while calling for increased military spending and strengthened national defence. It also advocates for scaling back foreign missions that do not serve Hungary’s interests.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has echoed the claim that Magyar is pushing for forced conscription, with candidates campaigning on the premise that Tisza will embroil Hungary in the war in Ukraine, re-direct pension funds to support Kyiv and impose conscription.

There is no evidence, however, that Fidesz is behind this social media campaign.

Researchers at the Gnida Project, an open-source investigative unit which tracks Russian disinformation, have linked the theory to Storm-1516, a Russian propagandist group that spreads false claims online to further the interests of the government in Moscow.

The group was first recognised in 2023 by a group of researchers at Clemson University in South Carolina, and has since been identified in multiple election campaigns, including in the US and Germany.

Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Centre, a specialised team that detects foreign state influence operations, said in a 2024 report that the group formed part of a network of “Russian influence actors” that use synchronised techniques to try and discredit Democratic candidates in the final weeks of three US presidential campaigns.

In December 2025, the German government summoned the Russian ambassador over allegations that the group had interfered in the country’s federal elections.

Storm-1516 uses a range of tactics, including creating accounts posing as citizen journalists on YouTube and X, as well as setting up fake news websites to spread false narratives.

These well-established tactic can be seen in Hungary: in this election, Storm-1516 impersonated Euronews by creating a fake report and accompanying website that falsely claimed Magyar insulted Donald Trump at a campaign rally.

A report from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, an independent non-profit think tank based in London, found that pro-Kremlin information operations, including Storm-1516 have increased their activity in Hungary over the past few weeks, focusing their efforts on discrediting Magyar and his party.

It found that the fake website impersonating Euronews was one of six newly created websites linked to Storm-1516 that were all registered in two weeks and spread false claims about the Hungarian opposition.

The sites shared content in both English and Hungarian, suggesting an intent to target both audiences.

Storm-1516 uses misleading Facebook ads for reach

The false claim that Magyar is planning to introduce compulsory military service also ran as two Facebook advertisements, allowing it to reach a targeted audience in Hungary beyond a regular social media post, the Gnida Project found.

One advert, featuring a photo of Magyar and a link to Tisza’s party website, carried the caption “Every 18-year-old should know: conscription is coming back.”

Together, these ads reached more than 20,000 people combined in Hungary, the majority over the age of 50.

Meta, which owns Facebook, allows advertisers to target users in specific areas or age groups for a fee. In 2025, the tech giant banned political advertisements, defined as those created by political candidates, parties or content promoting or opposing election outcomes, in response to the EU updating its political advertising rules.

The ads promoting the false claim were posted by a page listed as a beauty salon, which has since been removed. No evidence of a salon operating in Hungary under the same name could be found.

According to the Gnida Project, Facebook ads are not a common tactic for Storm-1516, but the campaign has used them in the past.

They said that Storm-1516 often relies on contractors with regional and linguistic knowledge to carry out campaigns on its behalf.

“One of the clearest examples is how almost every campaign targeting Armenia is connected to the Russian propagandist of Turkish origin, Okay Deprem, and the campaign materials are executed in a certain way unique to the targeted region,” the Gnida Project said.

“We are observing the same phenomenon with Hungary, for example, most of the video materials are executed in vertical format with relatively unusual dimensions,” it added.

From conscription to conspiracy theories

Storm-1516’s theories have ranged from implicating members of Tisza to the Epstein files and accusing Magyar of funnelling financial aid from the EU to Ukraine.

One campaign identified by the Gnida Project used a vertical video with a false investigation from the “European Centre for Investigative Journalism” — a non-existent organisation.

The video falsely claimed that Magyar was involved in a scheme to funnel $16.7 million (€14.3 million) in EU aid funds to Ukraine and alleged that a trip Magyar made to Ukraine in 2024 to visit a hospital damaged by a Russian strike was a ruse to deliver the money.

Elsewhere, Lakmusz, a Hungarian fact-checking website, reported that posts linked to Storm 1516 were attempting to discredit Ágnes Forsthoffer, Tisza’s vice president, by alleging she was implicated in sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring.

According to the Gnida Project, Storm-1516’s campaign has taken different forms in targeting international and domestic audiences.

“We are seeing that they are using different fake websites to target the Hungarian audience and the international audience to proliferate the same narrative,” the Gnida Project said. “This is a tactical shift.”

For example, after JD Vance’s visit to Hungary, in which he endorsed Orban, an English-language campaign appeared claiming that Magyar had withdrawn from the election, mimicking a Sky News report. The report and the claim are, however, baseless.

With Iran increasingly isolated among its Gulf neighbors, recent reports say Tehran has been deepening its ties in the South Caucasus with the Republic of Georgia.

The former Soviet republic, which was until recently seen as an aspiring European Union and potential NATO member candidate, has slowly moved closer to Tehran.

“Iran has built a vast influence infrastructure in Georgia, which includes entities sanctioned by the U.S. government for links to extremism and viewed in Washington as fronts for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),” Giorgi Kandelaki, former member of the Georgian Parliament, told Fox News Digital. 

IRAN BACKLASH FORCES GULF ALLIES TOWARD WASHINGTON AS REGIONAL TENSIONS RISE

Kandelaki, co-author of a recent report with the Hudson Institute titled Georgia’s Iranian Turn: Tehran’s Rapid Expansion of Influence in a Once-Committed U.S. Ally, said that Tbilisi’s turn toward Iran is bad for Georgians but also bad for U.S. interests in the region.

“Georgia has an overwhelmingly pro-U.S. public opinion committed to Western values with it also being viewed as a traditional U.S. ally in Washington. This reality presents a terrible precedent and reversing this trajectory is in the interest of both the U.S. but also Georgian society,” he added.

While Georgia has remained diplomatically neutral, the Hudson report details the budding ties between the two countries and how Iran uses Georgia as a network for intelligence infrastructure, penetrating Georgia’s religious, educational and cultural institutions to impact society.

BLOODY NYC KHAMENEI VIGIL REVEALS ANTI-US PROTEST NETWORK LINKED TO IRAN

As far back as 2007, Iran opened the Georgian branch of Al-Mustafa University, which is considered one of Iran’s main arms for the dissemination of Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s ideology abroad, according to United Against a Nuclear Iran.

The U.S. Treasury Department stated in 2020 that Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force uses Al-Mustafa University in Georgia as an international recruitment network for Iran and acts as a conduit for the Islamic Republic’s ideological and security interests.

“Al-Mustafa has facilitated unwitting tourists from Western countries to come to Iran, from whom IRGC-Qud’s Force members sought to collect intelligence,” the Treasury Department said. It also said that the university facilitated student exchanges with foreign universities to develop intelligence sources.

RUSSIA ALLEGEDLY SHARING SATELLITE INTELLIGENCE ON US BASES WITH IRAN, WORLD LEADER CLAIMS

GEORGIAN DEMONSTRATORS WATCH IRAN CLOSELY AS THEIR OWN PROTESTS GRIND ON

A report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies estimated the university’s annual budget is $100 million and has trained tens of thousands of emissaries across the world who spread Iran’s revolutionary ideology.

Iran has utilized sympathetic Georgians to commit international crimes to advance its domestic agenda.

While no links have ever been made with the Tbilisi government, a Georgian national, Agil Aslanov, who had ties to organized crime, was reportedly recruited by the Quds Forces to assassinate a prominent Jewish leader in Azerbaijan in 2022. In another case in 2025, Georgian national Polad Omarov was indicted in federal court in New York City and sentenced to 25 years in prison for attempting to assassinate prominent Iranian activist Masih Alinejad, a vocal critic of the Islamic Republic’s use of violence against peaceful protesters.

Georgia once made significant inroads to foster political and security ties with the United States following the Rose Revolution in 2003, becoming a bedrock of regional security in the Black Sea region. After decades of Soviet rule, Georgia aligned itself with the United States, contributing to missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and eventually signed a Strategic Partnership Charter with the United States in 2009.

Tbilisi’s ties with Tehran have been expanded under the pro-Russia Georgian Dream party that took power in 2012. That bond, according to analysts, has tightened after Georgia’s pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili finished her six-year term in office in 2024 and was replaced by Mikheil Kavelashvili, who was chosen as her successor by a newly established electoral college reportedly dominated by Georgian Dream supporters.

INSIDE IRAN’S MILITARY: MISSILES, MILITIAS AND A FORCE BUILT FOR SURVIVAL

Kavelashvili’s installment followed parliamentary elections in Oct. 2024 marred by some irregularities, according to the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi, in which the Georgian Dream declared victory. 

Leadership ties between both countries have steadily grown since the Georgian Dream’s disputed 2024 parliamentary victory.

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze visited Iran in May 2024 for the funeral of Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter accident, and again in July to attend the inauguration of Iran’s current president, Masoud Pezeshkian, where Iranian news agencies reported both leaders praised the growing relationship between the two countries.

WHO ACTUALLY RUNS IRAN RIGHT NOW? THE KEY POWER PLAYERS AS TRUMP CLAIMS TALKS TO ‘TOP’ OFFICIAL

Many Georgian companies are also importing oil and petroleum products from Iran, a key economic lifeline for the regime and its regional war efforts, according to Georgian NGO Civic IDEA. In 2024, Iranian oil export revenue was approximately $43 billion, which accounts for roughly 57% of Iran’s total export revenue.

According to Civic IDEA, between 2022 and 2025, 72 companies registered in Georgia imported Iranian oil and petroleum, including eight inked to donors of the ruling Georgian Dream party, boosting Iran’s revenue stream even while heavily sanctioned by Western nations.

“Georgia has become Iran’s primary sanctions-evasion hub . . . funneling hard currency back to Tehran’s war machine and the IRGC through specific schemes in oil imports,” Nicholas Chkhaidze, national security and strategic communications analyst based in Tbilisi, told Fox News Digital.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Chkhaidze said these Georgian companies that import Iranian oil pay in cash and can bypass international banking sanctions. 

“The scale is massive, as Tehran uses the revenue from these schemes to fund its regional operations,” Chkhaidze claimed.

Telephone and email requests for comment sent to the government of Georgia were not returned. A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations would not comment on the relations between the two countries.