Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry rejected any suggestion that Kyiv was behind the discovery of explosives near the TurkStream pipeline in Serbia. Spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said Ukraine had no involvement in the incident and called it a Russian false-flag operation carried out as part of Moscow’s broader interference in Hungary’s elections.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, speaking after a security meeting convened by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said Europe was moving toward a serious energy crisis driven primarily by the wars in Iran and Ukraine. He said Kyiv was trying to cut off oil and natural gas supplies to Europe, and added that Ukraine had previously blown up the Nord Stream pipeline while insisting for a long time that Russia was responsible. The Serbia incident, he said, fit squarely into Ukraine’s efforts to disrupt the transit of Russian gas and oil to Europe.
Orban stopped short of directly accusing Ukraine but said Kyiv had been trying for years to cut Europe off from Russian energy.
A former Hungarian intelligence officer told the Reuters news agency that in recent days a similar false-flag plan targeting the pipeline in Serbia had been discussed in Hungary as a way to influence the election outcome. Peter Magyar, leader of the opposition Tisza party, offered the same assessment. He said several people had publicly predicted that something would accidentally happen to the pipeline in Serbia at Easter, a week before the Hungarian elections, and that is exactly what occurred.
On the morning of April 5, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic announced that explosives had been found near the gas infrastructure connecting Serbia and Hungary. He later specified that the explosives were discovered in the village of Velebit, in the municipality of Kanjiza, several hundred meters from the Balkan Stream pipeline, part of TurkStream, through which Hungary receives Russian gas. Vucic said he had informed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban of the incident.
According to the Financial Times, the Kremlin launched an information campaign aimed at helping Orban and his Fidesz party win Hungary’s parliamentary elections in April 2026. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the report as false.
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