As massive protests swept through the capitals of Hungary and Serbia in recent days, the embattled and increasingly autocratic leaders of both countries moved to crack down on critics, who, they insisted, have received quiet assistance from a hostile foreign entity: the United States Agency for International Development.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic, facing protests over economic conditions and corruption, have attributed their political woes to foreign conspiracies. They’ve blamed the movements threatening their power on EU bureaucrats in Brussels, on the 94-year-old George Soros, and—inspired by the actions by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk—on USAID.
In Budapest Saturday, tens of thousands demonstrated against Orban amid anger over inflation. The right-wing populist leader—who has trailed a center-right opponent in polls ahead of an election next year—vowed to purge critics at non-governmental organizations and media outlets that, he claims, were paid by the EU and the United States.
“After today’s festive gathering comes the Easter cleaning,” Orban said. “The bugs have overwintered. We will dismantle the financial machine that has used corrupt dollars to buy politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists. We will eliminate the entire shadow army.”
Those remarks seemingly referenced Orban’s vow last month to go “line by line” through pro-democracy organizations in Hungary that have received US funding in an bid to “make their existence legally impossible.”
In Belgrade on Saturday, a crowd the government said was just over 100,000 people—and which protesters said was at least 300,000—rallied in the city center against President Vucic, another right-leaning populist. The assembly was part of a mounting anti-corruption protest movement set off by the November collapse of a concrete canopy at a train station that killed 15 people. Critics have blamed the disaster on shoddy work by contractors and alleged corruption by government officials.
But Vucic has called the movement a “color revolution,” using a term popularized by Vladimir Putin to suggest protesters are part of a western-funded regime-change effort. And recently, he has added USAID to the constellation of groups he says are part of the plot against him. Vucic last month cited Trump’s attack on USAID to justify raids against good-government groups, some of which had received modest funding from the agency. When a Serbian journalist last month asked Vucic about his son’s alleged links to criminals, the president responded: “How much money have you received from USAID?”
Such rhetoric has quickly become common among governments in central and eastern Europe. Leaders are using Trump’s and Musk’s hyperbolic and often false attacks on USAID—including Musk’s claim that the agency is a “criminal organization”—as a cudgel to attack domestic critics and civil society.
In Georgia, increasingly pro-Russian and autocratic Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has cheered Trump’s suspension of foreign aid and has accused USAID of joining in a “coordinated” attack on Georgian interests, the Guardian has reported. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico—who critics accuse of dismantling anti-corruption efforts to help political allies facing prosecution—has similarly celebrated the attacks on USAID and has asked Musk for information on past US support for non-governmental groups in that country.
But the trend of adopting USAID as a bogeyman looks particularly ominous in Serbia and Hungary, as those countries’ leaders edge toward using past US support, real or alleged, as an excuse to shut down democratic opposition.
“We are certainly seeing this played out in Hungary and Serbia with Orban and [Vucic] using Musk’s and others’ negative statements about USAID as a justification for cracking down on some groups that received USAID funding,” said Thomas Carothers, a democracy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Trump and his allies aren’t simply enabling such efforts—they are encouraging them. In a visit last week to Serbia, Donald Trump Jr. used his podcast to conduct a fawning interview with Vucic, in which the US president’s son eagerly amplified the Serbian leader’s claim that USAID funds were part of an international conspiracy aimed at undermining the Vucic government.
Trump Jr. asked if the canopy collapse that set off was anti-corruption protests in Serbia had been “weaponized, perhaps like our January 6.” Vucic said he had already reached that conclusion: “I was saying the same to my people here,” he claimed.
Asked by Trump Jr. about the extent to which the protests against him are “manufactured,” the Serbian president indicated the movement is wholly the work NGOs funded by USAID and other foreign organizations. “I am absolutely certain that your father and…Elon Musk and some others guys, they can recognize it easily,” Vucic said.
