Vladimir Putin has a designated aide for liaising with Viktor Orban: Tigran Garibian, the minister-counsellor at the Russian embassy in Budapest. When Orban and Putin meet, he serves as the Russian president’s interpreter. When the meetings are held in Moscow, Garibian is flown in specifically for the occasion, Agentstvo has found. Garibian is the son-in-law of Viktor Zimin, the long-time head of Khakassia, who accompanied the president on his holiday to Siberia in 2017. Garibian’s brother heads the project finance and private equity division at Promsvyazbank (PSB), the primary bank for Russia’s defense industry.
Details. Garibian first appeared with the two leaders in August 2019, photographed as Putin and Orban attended the World Judo Championships in Budapest. In early February 2022, Garibian was present at Russian-Hungarian talks in the Kremlin. The next time he was captured alongside Putin and Orban was last November during the Hungarian prime minister’s latest visit to Moscow.
- Garibian joined the foreign ministry in 2004 and was first assigned to the Russian Embassy in Budapest in 2006. In 2012, he returned to Moscow for two years, before being reassigned to the Budapest embassy as a counsellor. In 2020, he was appointed counsellor in the Third European Section of the foreign ministry, and in 2023 he returned to Budapest for a second time as chargé d’affaires (the second-in-command at the diplomatic mission after the ambassador).
- Garibian is engaged in Russia’s campaign to promote Orban and his Fidesz party in the upcoming parliamentary elections, as reported by The Washington Post on Saturday. A European intelligence official told the paper that Garibian regularly meets with pro-government Hungarian journalists, issuing instructions as part of a Kremlin-backed social media campaign aimed at spreading the message that Orban is the only candidate capable of defending Hungary’s sovereignty. In March 2024, Intelligence Online reported on Garibian’s interactions with pro-government Hungarian media in the run-up to the European Parliament elections.
Family ties. Garibian’s wife, Oksana Garibian-Zimina, was born into the family of Viktor Zimin, who served as head of Khakassia from 2009 to 2018. In August 2017, Putin spent two days in Siberia in the company of Zimin, then-defense minister Sergei Shoigu, and head of the Tuva region Sholban Kara-ool (Putin is photographed fishing with Zimin). In September 2018, Zimin lost the first round of the gubernatorial election to Communist Party candidate Valentin Konovalov, later withdrawing from the race. Zimin then served as deputy CEO of Russian Railways for a year, and died of Covid in 2020.
- Garibian’s brother Artem worked in local government in the Leningrad Region in 2006; he then briefly served as deputy head of the representative office of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug Administration in Moscow. From 2008 to 2020, Artem Garibian served as deputy CEO of the state-owned oil company, Zarubezhneft. In 2020, he was appointed to head the project finance and private equity directorate at PSB.
Another Putin interpreter. The OSCE’s election monitoring mission in Hungary features Daria Boyarskaya, a senior adviser at the OSCE parliamentary assembly. This week, she is coordinating a closed-door meeting between OSCE parliamentarians and Hungarian civil society groups.
- In June 2019, Boyarskaya served as Putin’s interpreter during his meeting with US President Donald Trump in Japan. Fiona Hill, who was then serving as Trump’s deputy national security adviser, suspected that «the woman had been selected by Putin specifically to distract our president.» The Hungarian Helsinki Committee has called for Boyarskaya’s removal from the OSCE election monitoring mission.
Context. Elections in Hungary are due to be held on 12 April. In early March, Vsquare reported that three GRU officers had arrived in Budapest posing as diplomats, tasked with influencing the elections and helping to secure Orban’s victory. The Financial Times reported that Vladimir Putin had approved that campaign plan.
- On Saturday, The Washington Post, citing an internal SVR memo, reported that Russian intelligence grew concerned over Orban’s falling approval ratings. To «fundamentally shift the election campaign paradigm», the agency proposed staging an assassination attempt on the prime minister. According to documents reviewed by the Post, the plan involved creating AI-generated videos and spreading disinformation across social media.
- Against that backdrop, Matryoshka, a disinformation network linked to the Russian state, began circulating videos on X claiming that a coup was being planned in Hungary in the event of a Fidesz election victory, as well as an assassination attempt against Orban.
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