Péter Magyar, the leader of Hungary’s Tisza party, has said he has already spoken to 10 European leaders, a day after his party’s landslide victory ended Viktor Orbán’s 16-year continuous rule in Hungary, according to the BBC.

Magyar’s Stance on Putin

Magyar stated that he would not be calling Vladimir Putin, a close partner of Orbán, even though he would speak to him if the Russian leader called, according to the BBC.

“If Vladimir Putin calls I’ll pick up the phone,” he told reporters during a three-hour marathon press conference to mark his Tisza party’s election success on Sunday, according to the BBC.

“I don’t think it’ll happen,” he stressed, “but if we did talk I’d tell him to please, after four years, put an end to the killing and end this war,” according to the BBC.

Relations with European Leaders

Moscow has said it respects Magyar’s victory and expects to retain “pragmatic” relations with Budapest, according to the BBC.

Orbán has also been a key ally of US President Donald Trump, who backed him to win Sunday’s election, and Vice-President JD Vance reinforced that with a two-day campaign visit last week, according to the BBC.

Magyar told journalists that he would not be phoning Trump either, but if Trump phoned him, he would say he was glad as they were “strong allies in Nato”, and he would invite him to attend the 70th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising against Soviet occupation next October, according to the BBC.

A former insider from Orbán’s own Fidesz party, Magyar launched a grassroots movement to put an end to corruption and cronyism in the government, according to the BBC.

Election Results and Future Plans

Latest preliminary results give Tisza 136 seats, down from an earlier figure of 138 but still a comfortable “super majority” of two-thirds of the seats in parliament, enabling the party to change the constitution, according to the BBC.

Magyar said some 400,000 votes had yet to be counted and he was optimistic his party would gain some of the remaining seats, according to the BBC.

He said Hungarian voters had not voted just for a change of government but for “complete regime change,” according to the BBC.

Magyar was clearly a man in demand among European leaders on Monday, after voters had swung behind his party in dramatic fashion on Sunday, according to the BBC.

“Hungary has chosen Europe,” was the assessment of Ursula von der Leyen the European Commission president, while Von der Leyen was one of the leaders he had already spoken to, he told assembled Hungarian and international journalists, according to the BBC.

Hungary belonged in the EU no matter what the outgoing government was planning, Magyar stressed, adding that it was his country’s interests to join the eurozone. He has already mapped out his first diplomatic visits, to Poland, Austria and Germany, countries that he emphasised Hungary’s close affinity to, according to the BBC.

The 45-year-old Tisza leader struck a very different tone from Hungary’s defeated prime minister, who had long pinned the blame on the EU and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky for the continuing war in Ukraine, according to the BBC.

Orbán’s campaign claimed they were prolonging Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, and he blocked a €90bn (£78bn) EU loan of aid to Kyiv last month, prompting European accusations of disloyalty, according to the BBC.

Magyar told reporters that every Hungarian knew that Ukraine was the victim of the war with Russia, according to the BBC.

The war made no sense from a Russian perspective too, he said, “as tens of thousands of Russians have lost their lives, and tens or even hundreds of thousands of Russian families have been destroyed”, including Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine, according to the BBC.

“It would probably be a short phone call [with Putin], and I don’t think he’d end the war on my advice,” according to the BBC.

Although Orbán did have allies in the EU, he was the only leader who sought to veto a loan that he had previously agreed to, after Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic secured an opt-out at a December summit, according to the BBC.

His government’s ties to Russia came under increasing scrutiny after Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó admitted sharing information with Russian officials before and after EU meetings on sanctions, according to the BBC.

At one point Szijjártó is alleged to have told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov “I am at your service”, a leak that prompted Orbán to order a wiretapping investigation, according to the BBC.

Hungary’s prime minister-elect was handed a note during Monday’s press conference and went on to allege that the outgoing foreign minister had been shredding confidential documents relating to sanctions with Russia in the ministry building that day, according to the BBC.

There was no comment from the ministry, according to the BBC.