Members of Hungary's ruling party were absent for an extraordinary parliament session devoted to a purported Russian cyberattack on the country’s foreign ministry, local media reported.

The meeting last Friday was initiated by Hungarian opposition parties and focused in part on the 2022 cyberattack on the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was allegedly carried out by hackers linked to Russia’s intelligence services.

In March 2022, the Hungarian investigative news outlet Direkt36 reported that Russians had gained full access to the ministry’s systems. 

This May, the news website 444 revealed through leaked internal documents that the ministry had lied about the hacks by denying their authenticity. The outlet said evidence points to involvement by Russia’s APT28 and APT29. 

Meanwhile, several politicians within Fidesz have denied the incident, calling reports about the attack “campaign lies.”

According to 444, at the session on Friday members of the centrist Momentum Movement party marked the seats of the missing Fidesz members with Russian flags.

“Of course, the Fidesz representatives didn't deem it important to show up at their workplace. We won't become either a Chinese or Russian colony!” Momentum Movement said in a Facebook post translated from Hungarian. 

Fidesz members warned in advance that they would not attend the meeting, calling it a “farce.” Without their presence, the meeting lacked a quorum — the minimum number of members required to be present for the session to be valid and decisions to be made.

Fidesz is a right-wing populist party led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has maintained close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the ongoing war with Ukraine.

Since the start of Moscow’s invasion, Orban has frequently impeded the European Union’s decisions to assist Kyiv, which often require the consensus of all 27 member states.

Recently, he pushed back against some NATO proposals that would allow Ukraine to use Western weapons to strike targets within Russia.

According to Direkt36, Russian hacking activities have been ongoing for at least a decade and have resulted in high-level access within the government.