Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said over the weekend that Hungary should fear the European Union more than Russia, pledging to dismantle what he called Brussels’ “oppressive machinery” ahead of heated parliamentary elections in April.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pledged to deepen cooperation with a group of four Central and Eastern European nations, including Hungary and Slovakia, despite concerns over their leaders’ perceived authoritarian style and refusal to provide military aid to war-torn Ukraine.

Bulgarian President Iliana Yotova has appointed a senior central bank official as interim prime minister in a bid to steady the European Union nation after years of chronic political instability.

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank, continued providing banking services to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein years after his 2008 conviction and months before his 2019 arrest, according to U.S. Justice Department documents released Thursday.

Hungary’s main opposition leader, 44-year-old Péter Magyar, said Thursday that he has become the target of what he described as a “Russian-style smear campaign” after he was secretly filmed during a consensual sexual encounter with a former girlfriend in 2024.