From Friendship to Leverage: How Belarus Built Orbán's Image in Four Phases

Key Findings

• BELTA framed Orbán as a “friend” in 81% of articles in 2023 — the year Hungary’s FM Szijjártó made his first post-2020 visits to Minsk. In independent Zerkalo, the same politician in the same year was framed through “sanctions” (28%). Same events, opposite portraits.

• Szijjártó is an instrument, not a newsmaker. BELTA amplifies him 3–53x compared to independents (normalized per 1,000 documents). 100% of BELTA’s Szijjártó mentions are Belarus-related. In 2024, Szijjártó (26.6‰) exceeded Orbán himself (10.8‰) in BELTA — a minister of foreign affairs’ visit to Minsk mattered more than the PM.

• Four-phase narrative evolution: BELTA’s framing shifted from “cooperation” (2020–22) → “friendship” (2023–24) → “leverage” (2026, pipeline Druzhba as a tool to block EU aid to Ukraine).

• BELTA mentions Hungary 1.6x more than independents in 2025 (22.8‰ vs 14.4‰ normalized per 1,000 documents). However, in specific political contexts — Szijjártó visits, pipeline crisis — the amplification reaches 13–53x.

• Pipeline Druzhba became a political weapon in 2026: BELTA published 97 articles about the pipeline in February 2026 alone, with 47% mentioning Hungary and 39% mentioning blocking/veto — framing the energy crisis as leverage for Orbán’s blockade of €90 billion EU aid to Ukraine.

2. Two Mirrors: Same Politician, Opposite Portraits

BELTA and Zerkalo both write about Orbán — but in entirely different frames. The framing table below shows the percentage of Orbán-mentioning articles that contain each keyword cluster. Data is verified: “friendship” was separated from pipeline “Druzhba,” and “peace” was refined to exclude “world” contexts.

BELTA — Orbán as Friend (2,578 docs) friendship (verified) 2023: 81% cooperation 2024: 80% peace (strict) 2024: 32% partner 2024: 18% sanctions avg: 13%

Zerkalo — Orbán as Obstructor (883 docs) ukraine 43% sanctions 26% blocking / veto 18% friendship 7% cooperation 6%

BELTA’s top frames — friendship, cooperation, peace — are virtually absent from Zerkalo. Zerkalo’s top frames — sanctions, blocking, veto — are minimized in BELTA. The overlap is almost zero. Two media systems looked at the same politician and constructed two entirely different figures: a peacemaker-friend vs. an EU obstructor.

4. Pipeline “Druzhba”: From Infrastructure to Political Weapon

The Druzhba oil pipeline — “Friendship” in Russian — carries Russian crude to Hungary and Slovakia through Ukraine. In 2025–2026, it became the focal point of a new narrative: Hungary blocking EU aid to Ukraine over pipeline disruptions.

BELTA: pipeline article peaks

Feb 2026		97 articles
Mar 2026		47 articles
Aug 2025		46 articles
2022–2023 avg/month		6 articles

Narrative shift: from infrastructure to leverage

Year	BELTA (pipeline docs)			Zerkalo (pipeline docs)
	docs	% Hungary	% block/veto	docs	% Hungary	% block/veto
2022	67	10%	7%	48	6%	10%
2025	92	64%	12%	35	31%	20%
2026	145	50%	38%	31	58%	61%

In 2022, the Druzhba pipeline was a technical story — 10% Hungary mentions, 7% blocking. By 2025, Hungary appeared in 64% of BELTA’s pipeline articles: the pipeline was no longer infrastructure, it was a political actor. In February 2026, BELTA published 97 pipeline articles in a single month, with 47% referencing Hungary and 39% referencing blocking or veto — framing the Druzhba crisis as Orbán’s leverage tool against EU support for Ukraine.

Both BELTA and Zerkalo cover the pipeline in 2026 — a rare shared topic. But the framing diverges: BELTA presents the pipeline disruption as Ukraine’s fault (justifying Hungary’s blockade), while Zerkalo frames it as Hungary using energy dependency as leverage against EU solidarity.

Who owns the oil: MOL and Orbán

A critical detail missing from BELTA’s coverage: the oil in the Druzhba pipeline becomes the property of Hungarian company MOL Group at the Belarus–Ukraine border. As a Hungarian government official confirmed: “The crude oil in question is owned by MOL, it is taken over at a station in Belarus and then arrives in Ukraine. Ukraine only carries out the transport.” Three foundations linked to Orbán control 30.49% of MOL (Center for the Study of Democracy), making it an instrument of his energy policy. Since 2022, Hungary has increased its dependency on Russian crude from 61% to 92% — turning a temporary EU sanctions exemption into a permanent loophole. In September 2025, Szijjártó stated that 73% of Hungary’s oil arrives via Belarus — over 5 million tonnes per year.

Beyond oil: the fertilizer connection

The Belarus–Hungary relationship extends beyond oil. On November 4, 2024 — one week after Szijjártó’s visit to Minsk for the Eurasian security conference — Lukashenko publicly outlined a scheme for circumventing Western sanctions on Belarusian potash fertilizers:

“Let’s do it together and sell complex, mixed fertilizers. We deliver potash somewhere, there’s a factory on the border somewhere — we mix the fertilizers and sell them abroad together right away. The demand is enormous.”
— Aleksandr Lukashenko, November 4, 2024, president.gov.by

Lukashenko did not name the country. But the context is transparent: a “factory on the border” in an EU state, one week after the only EU foreign minister who visits Minsk. The scheme describes sanctions circumvention: import Belarusian potash, mix with other components → “complex fertilizers” → re-export as a non-sanctioned product. In 2022, Lukashenko had signaled this approach: “Trading potash will be like trading weapons — everything must be quiet and calm.”

What Szijjártó actually says in Minsk

At the same October 2024 Minsk conference, Szijjártó delivered claims that don’t survive verification. He stated: “We pay 5 times higher prices for gas than people living in America.” FactCheck.LT’s analysis rated this claim “mostly incorrect”: the maximum EU/US gas price gap (Sweden, Portugal) reaches 3.7x, not 5x, and Hungary’s own gas prices are actually lower than US prices. BELTA, naturally, transmitted the claim without verification — as it does with all Szijjártó statements.

Who owns the oil: MOL and Orbán

A critical detail missing from BELTA’s coverage: the oil in the Druzhba pipeline becomes the property of Hungarian company MOL Group at the Belarus–Ukraine border. As a Hungarian government official confirmed: “The crude oil in question is owned by MOL, it is taken over at a station in Belarus and then arrives in Ukraine. Ukraine and the Ukrainian transport company only carry out the transport.” Three foundations linked to Orbán control 30.49% of MOL (Center for the Study of Democracy), making it an instrument of his energy policy. Since 2022, Hungary has increased its dependency on Russian crude from 61% to 92% — turning a temporary EU sanctions exemption into a permanent loophole. In September 2025, Szijjártó stated that 73% of Hungary’s oil arrives via Belarus — over 5 million tonnes per year.

Beyond oil: the fertilizer connection

The Belarus–Hungary relationship extends beyond oil. On November 4, 2024 — one week after Szijjártó’s visit to Minsk for the Eurasian security conference — Lukashenko publicly outlined a scheme for circumventing Western sanctions on Belarusian potash fertilizers:

“Let’s do it together and sell complex, mixed fertilizers. We deliver potash somewhere, there’s a factory on the border somewhere — we mix the fertilizers and sell them abroad together right away. The demand is enormous.”
— Aleksandr Lukashenko, November 4, 2024, president.gov.by

Lukashenko did not name the country. But the context is transparent: a “factory on the border” in an EU member state, one week after the only EU foreign minister who visits Minsk. The scheme describes sanctions circumvention: import sanctioned Belarusian potash into an EU country, mix it with other components to create “complex fertilizers,” and re-export as a non-sanctioned product. In 2022, Lukashenko had signaled this approach even more bluntly: “Trading potash will be like trading weapons — everything must be quiet and calm.”

Conclusions

1. BELTA built a deliberate, evolving image of Hungary as the regime’s friend inside the EU. The four-phase evolution — cooperation → friendship → cooperation → leverage — tracks political needs: from seeking legitimation after 2020 isolation, through emotional bonding during Szijjártó’s visits, to instrumentalizing the pipeline crisis as a tool against EU support for Ukraine.

2. Szijjártó was instrumentalized, not covered. A 3–53x amplification ratio with 100% Belarus context shows targeted media engineering, not journalism. The 2024 inversion — Szijjártó exceeding Orbán in BELTA — is the clearest evidence that state media treated visits to Minsk as political events of the highest order.

3. Independent media see the same politician through a completely different lens. Where BELTA sees friendship (81%) and cooperation (80%), Zerkalo sees sanctions (26%) and blocking (18%). The framing overlap is essentially zero — two parallel media realities coexist for the same events.

4. The pipeline “Druzhba” symbolizes the evolution. A word meaning “friendship” names an oil pipeline that became a political weapon. In BELTA, the Druzhba crisis justified Hungary’s blockade of EU aid to Ukraine; in Zerkalo, the same crisis exposed Hungary’s willingness to leverage energy dependency against European solidarity. The name itself — friendship turned to leverage — is the story of Belarus-Hungary relations in two words.

5. Context: Hungary’s April 2026 elections. As this report is published, Hungary approaches parliamentary elections (April 12) that could end Orbán’s 16-year rule. Polls show Fidesz at 39% vs. opposition Tisza at 48%. If Orbán loses, Belarus loses its only EU-level advocate — the politician whom BELTA spent four years branding as a peacemaker, friend, and partner. The media image built by BELTA may soon lose its subject.

Update (March 2026): Framing percentages recalculated using BELTA-only data. Original analysis included SB.by aggregated under source_type=’state’, which contained navigation bar contamination inflating mention counts. Key metrics (Szijjártó per-1,000 tables, amplification ratios) were unaffected as they used source-level normalization. Hungary amplification ratio corrected from 14x to 1.6x (overall); event-specific amplification of 13–53x confirmed. Friendship frame corrected from 78% to 81% (BELTA-only, finding strengthened).