INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Russia-linked investment bank that critics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban call a "Kremlin spy bank."Rallied by opposition leader
Peter Marki-Zay, they chanted "Russians go home!," a slogan used during the anti-Communist uprising in 1956 that was brutally crushed by
Soviet troops.Orban's carefully nurtured ties to President Vladimir Putin have become a lightning rod for the country's embattled
has been in power since 2010 and is bidding for a fourth straight term, still holds a narrow lead
2018, when he was shored up by populist economic and anti-immigration policies."Many conservative Hungarians have traditionally been
anti-Russian, so the invasion could be a red line for many Orban voters," Andras Bozoki, a politics professor at the Vienna-based Central
soon after winning power 12 years ago.He has met Putin annually, signing deals with Russia's Rosatom to expand a nuclear plant and with
Kyiv's progress toward NATO membership because of a dispute about language rights for the large ethnic-Hungarian minority in western
Ukraine.Such moves have fuelled accusations that Orban is Putin's "Trojan horse" inside the European Union, an allegation he fiercely
in Budapest.They had gathered in front of the International Investment Bank (IIB), majority-owned by the Russian state, which moved its
influence in Central Europe and, potentially, for intelligence gathering.Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Slovakia have all
said they are pulling out of the bank following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.Marki-Zay says Hungary should follow suit and also suspend
the Rosatom-backed nuclear project.But Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto says the IIB is not on any EU sanctions list and
governing party gets new voters but because opposition voters lose their enthusiasm for change," he added.Still, analysts are cautious about
