Tamás Menczer, the communications director of ruling Fidesz, said on Monday that the opposition Tisza Party is carrying out orders from Brussels "to prove that Hungarians support Ukraine’s accession to the European Union".

Menczer told a press conference on Monday that a pollster "linked to Tisza and financed from Brussels" had published a survey showing that Hungarians supported Ukraine’s EU accession. He said the party’s ongoing signature drive was also about collecting "enough signatures, if necessary, through forgery" to show that Hungarians were in favour of admitting Ukraine to the bloc.

"This is what [European People’s Party leader] Manfred Weber and [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen have commanded them to do because they want to admit Ukraine to the European Union basically immediately," he said.

"The first step would be bringing Ukraine into the bloc, and the second -- as Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, the advisor to Tisza leader Peter Magyar, has said -- would be to send Hungarian troops there..." Menczer said, adding that Brussels’s offer to Ukraine was "membership for war".

Hungary’s government and ruling parties, on the other hand, believe that a question as serious as Ukraine’s EU membership should be decided by the Hungarian people, he said, urging the public to participate in the upcoming referendum on the matter.