Fake news of the week: Is Europe preparing a preemptive strike against Russia?

On June 6, 2025, a video with the title “The EU wants to preemptively strike Russia! Orbán made a statement! #europeanunion #russia #svo #orban” was posted on the CTVBY YouTube channel. The video has already gathered over 1 million views!

Its content was as follows:

European Union countries are discussing the possibility of a preemptive strike against Russia. To prevent a potential attack from its side, this was stated by the Prime Minister of Hungary. Viktor Orbán clarified that by such a strike, European leaders mean continuing the war in Ukraine. According to him, the current EU leadership believes that the Union’s main goal of ensuring the welfare of its countries can only be achieved through fighting Russia. Orbán called such plans false and emphasized that Europe can be defended without continuing the Ukrainian conflict. I remind you that earlier the politician accused Brussels of intending to drag Europe into a military conflict between Moscow and Kiev, after which the EU Council repeatedly held hearings on the issue of depriving Hungary of voting rights in the union.

Our verdict based on the analyses conducted:

Verdict: Incorrect

Reasons:

• The thesis or statement is completely false: information from multiple sources or opinions of several experts in a specific field contradict it.
• Causal relationships and connections clearly do not exist as claimed.
• When quoting, essential parts are omitted, rearranged, changed, or incorrectly translated from a foreign language, resulting in a fundamental change in the meaning of what was said.
• The event occurred in substantial aspects differently than claimed.

Fact-checking rating scale

Full video:

We decided to check Viktor Orbán’s statements in the original version (in Hungarian) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2025.

Full speech:

Next, using the AssemblyAI API, we transcribed the speech into text format. Then a translation was performed using DeepL into English. Extended quote:

Now, after Trump’s victory, a new idea has emerged. Europe wants to become the defender of the global liberal empire. Liberals from America are fleeing to Brussels, after Washington, Brussels has become their new Mecca. My friends, but Brussels’ main problem is not that it is ruled by progressive liberal bureaucrats. The main problem is that Brussels is warlike. While the United States has finally become a supporter of peace, Brussels is stuck in war. According to the liberal plan, Europe must be centralized under the pretext of war. If war, then more Brussels, even less sovereignty. According to the liberal plan, Europe must build a new economic model, a military economy model, under the pretext of war. In their heads, war is the engine of the economy. Common debt burden, centralized management, and military treasury. The key to this liberal plan is Ukraine. Ukraine’s accelerated entry into the European Union is a convenient pretext for Europe’s military reorganization. The liberal plan leads to a military, centralized, and indebted Europe, where there is no freedom, but there is submission. This is Hungary’s problem. The Hungarian free people reproduce freely and are not inclined to kneel. Instead of submission and subordination, they prefer to follow their mind. We also have a plan. A patriotic plan. It consists of four points. First, we want peace. We don’t need a new eastern front, so we don’t need Ukraine’s membership in the European Union either. Second, we want sovereignty. We don’t want common taxes, we don’t want common loans, we don’t want centralized economic management, and we don’t want our money to go to war in a third country. We must protect freedom. We must return to people the freedom of politics, thought, and opinion. And fourth, we want to return Europe from migrants. We want Christian culture, schools on a national basis, streets and neighborhoods where there will be no fear. We want to be proud of our peoples. This is the patriotic plan.

We wanted to add additional links. During the final preparation of the publication, we prepared a request to the ChatGPT 4o model about finding FIMI/DIMI signs and conducting fact-checking. As a result, we encountered the fact of “contamination” of the model by the Russian disinformation Pravda network:

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