Ten employees of the Russian diplomatic mission in Budapest have been ordered to leave Hungary. The justification is phrased with diplomatic dryness - activities incompatible with diplomatic status, contrary to the Vienna Convention - which translated means Budapest claims these people were doing something other than diplomacy.

What makes the news weighty is not the number but the address. For years Hungary was Moscow's closest ally in NATO and in the European Union. Viktor Orban's government spent sixteen years stalling and delaying sanctions against the Kremlin and expanding energy contracts. Now the same state is expelling ten Russian diplomats.

What changed was not the diplomats

The difference is who takes the decision. After the election victory in April, the government is led by Peter Magyar, and foreign affairs by Anita Orban. The shift in course towards Moscow is not a nuance in a statement - it is the reason the statement exists at all.

The Hungarian authorities are not revealing what exactly those ten people were doing. Orban said only that the decision was taken to protect Hungary's security and sovereignty, and did not even specify a deadline for their departure. That is a deliberate choice: when the details are not published, the act itself carries the message.

A break without a break

Budapest simultaneously stresses that it does not want a rupture in relations with Moscow. Orban said this is not a diplomatic break and that Hungary will maintain the necessary dialogue with Russia, on the basis of mutual respect and respect for the rules.

That is the sentence you write when you want to strike but not to close the door. Russia has already announced it will respond to what it called an extremely hostile step.

From here something worth noticing in the Balkans becomes visible. A country's foreign policy can turn around in a few months - but for that, the people running it have to change. Not declarations, not strategies, not working groups. People.