(Pictured above) -- Not Putin, but Hungary's authoritarian PM Viktor Orban.

Conservative and liberal opposition parties coalesced to try and defeat Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. But on a day in which Russian military atrocities on the citizens of Bucha, Ukraine, were being broadcast around the world, Orban – an authoritarian ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin -- took 53% of the vote to win his fourth term, NPR’s Morning Edition reports.

That since failed conservative-liberal coalition formed an “unusually united opposition,” according to The New York Times, though Orban’s coalition with Russia’s Putin clearly is more effective. Orban has “cast himself as a neutral peacemaker who does not want to fan the war by sending weapons to Ukraine or to hurt Hungarian interests by imposing a ban on Russian oil imports.”

Like the U.S., Hungary’s population is split politically and culturally between urban (Budapest) and rural voters, and there was hope among those moderate conservatives and liberals in the anti-Orban coalition that, at the very least, a sufficient number of city votes would go the anti-authoritarian way and deprive Orban’s Fidesz party of two-thirds’ control of Hungary’s Parliament. 

That didn’t happen, either. Fidesz won 135 seats to the opposition’s 56 seats in Parliament, says NPR, which also notes that more than 90% of Hungary’s legacy media are controlled by the Fidesz government.

It’s no Poland: Contrast Hungary’s position in Russia’s war against Ukraine with that of Poland, which similarly is a former Soviet-bloc country now a part of the European Union and NATO, with majority nationalist, authoritarian leadership in its government for more than a decade. Poland is fervently anti-Russian, however, and it has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees while sending military and humanitarian aid across its eastern border. 

[According to official estimates, Hungary, population 9.6 million, had 7,749 Ukrainian refugees who have applied for temporary protected status as of March 27, while Poland, population 38 million, has taken in more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees in the first three weeks of the war.]

In his victory speech Sunday, Orban said this, according to Reporting Democracy via Balkan Insight:

“The victory will be remembered for the rest of our lives because so many people ganged up on us, including the left at home, the international left everywhere, the bureaucrats in Brussels, all the funds and organizations of the ruling empire, the foreign media, and in the end even the Ukrainian president.”

Sound familiar?: America’s punditocracy is still assessing our former president’s standing with the GOP, so it remains to be seen whether anti-Trump Republican groups in this country will need to coalesce with Democrats in 2024 and stanch the authoritarian movement here. 

…meanwhile…

Trump endorses Palin, natch … Of the 51 candidates running to replace Alaska’s sole member in the House of Representatives, Republican Don Young, who died in March, the one Donald J. Trump chose to endorse is Sarah Palin, the 2008 running mate to presidential candidate John McCain. 

“Sarah shocked many when she endorsed me very early in 2016, and we won big,” said ex-President Trump’s statement, in part. “Now it’s my turn!”

In his book published in 2018, the late Sen. McCain (R-AZ) wrote that he regretted choosing Palin as his running mate instead of former Sen. Joe Lieberman. [Lieberman was a Democrat from Connecticut who ran as Al Gore’s running mate in the 2000 presidential election, and became an independent in 2006.]

If Palin wins the late Rep. Young’s seat, she will serve only the remainder of the current term ending next January – unless she runs for, and wins, re-election this November. But with a rift growing between Ron DeSantis and Trump over what Trump sees as the Florida governor trying to grab the MAGA spotlight, Palin must now be considered on the short list of candidates to become his running mate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. 

They can see Russia from their house: Trump in late February said the “genius” Vladimir Putin was “very savvy” for invading two separatist regions of Ukraine. Palin in 2008 said, responding to a question about her foreign affairs acumen; “As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where – where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border.” Something to consider if this MAGA 2024 “dream” ticket comes to pass.

•••

Meanwhile, in disturbing health news. . . Here’s something you’d rather not read,  yet it is good to know about. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “If radioactive iodine is released into the air after a radiological or nuclear event it can be breathed into the lungs. In most cases, once radioactive iodine has entered the body, the thyroid gland quickly absorbs it. After it has been absorbed into the thyroid gland, radioactive iodine can then cause thyroid gland injury.”

So potassium iodide (“KI”), a stable, non-radioactive form, is taken in order to protect the thyroid from the radioactive version to prevent damage in the form of cancer.

Romania will start distributing iodine tablets to all people under 40 in the country starting in mid-April, according to Politico. Romania shares a border with Ukraine.

This distribution isn’t unique to Romania, as Finland, Bulgaria, Belgium and other European countries distribute the pills to their populations.

Yes, the fear of radiation is real.

--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics