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According to Kontroll, the son of the outgoing Prime Minister,
Gáspár Orbán, the son of Hungary’s outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been discharged from the Hungarian Defence Forces, local media report.
Sources at 444.hu confirmed that Orbán, who held the rank of captain, submitted his demobilsation request before the parliamentary elections on 12 April which saw his father’s Fidesz party trounced by the opposition in a landslide.
Gáspár Orbán was born in 1992 studied law and first became a footballer, playing as a midfielder for Videoton FC Fehérvár and Puskás Akadémia FC before founding a charismatic Christian youth movement called Felház.
He was sworn into the Hungarian Defence Forces after taking his oath in 2019 and in 2020 was sent on a nine-month training course at the elite Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK.
His Hungarian peer on that course, Captain Szilveszter Pálinkás, told the telex news site that he had been called by the Chief of General Staff and told, “I have to feed him, water him, make sure he completes this academy, because if he doesn’t, we’ll lose our jobs.”
A Hungarian military mission to Chad, with the aim of stemming migrant flows to Europe, was reportedly devised by Orbán who allegedly told a colleague at Sandhurst that he had a “divine inspiration” to help African Christians.
In 2024, Hungary announced it was sending around 200 troops to Chad to provide training and support counter-terrorism operations.
That mission raised eyebrows in Hungary, partly because the country had no substantive relations with Chad before and the promised of $200 million (€170 million) in aid was an deemed excessive pledge from one of Europe’s poorer countries.
Captain Pálinkás said that the military mission to Chad had been planned by Gáspár Orbán, then a lieutenant-general, and that he expected losses of life of around 50%.
That claim was denied by both Orbán and Defence Minister Kristóf Szalay-Bobrovniczky who said that the Chad mission did not happen, despite it being approved in parliament.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also said that the allegations were false as lieutenants in the Hungarian Defence Forces could not plan missions.