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The official announcement that JD Vance was to visit, days before Hungarians cast their ballots in a hotly contested election, was greeted by Budapest with no less than four exclamation marks and three emojis.

“!!Official!!” Viktor Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, wrote on social media as he confirmed the news. The White House said Vance, along with his wife Usha, will land in Hungary on Tuesday, in what is widely seen as an attempt to bolster Orbán as he trails in the polls.

But the US isn’t the only country, throwing its weight behind Orbán. Support has also apparently come from Hungary’s east, as Russian intelligence agencies, along with disinformation networks with links to Russia, are alleged to be working to sway the election.

Questions have begun to swirl as to why the two countries appear to agree on the need to keep Orbán – who once described Hungary as a “petri dish for illiberalism” – in power.

“That is somewhat ironic, isn’t it?” said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “If you would have asked me five years ago: ‘Would that happen?’ I would certainly say no.”

It was a glimpse of how US-Russian relations had transformed of late, he said. “On one level, the US and Russia are sort of playing their old rivalry games, but on another level, they seem to be aligning ideologically in terms of their commitment to, let’s say, a white nationalist Christian civilisational ethic.”

As the central European country prepares to head to the ballot, the election in a country of about 9.5 million has taken on an outsized importance. Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed Orbán, describing him as a “fantastic guy” and a “strong and powerful leader”.

Hungary, long seen by many as pro-Russian and a “bit of a Russian mole” within the EU and Nato, had not changed, nor had Russia, said Shapiro. “It’s the US that has changed here,” Shapiro said. “The US has essentially realigned itself ideologically and redefined its relationship with Russia. Viktor Orbán is ground zero of that because he’s the clearest sort of white Christian civilisational leader in Europe, and he’s the one who has had the most ideological impact and exchange with the Trump administration.”

Trump and those around him have long talked up Hungary, depicting it, in the words of one local journalist, as a sort of “Christian conservative Disneyland”.

The veneration has continued, even as Hungary plunged in press freedom rankings, faced accusations of no longer being a full democracy, and according to Transparency International, became the most corrupt country in the EU.

Orbán’s efforts to foster a warm relationship with the Trump administration stands in sharp contrast to his dealings with the EU, where the relationship has plunged to new lows amid clashes on migration, LGBTQ+ rights and, most recently, Orbán’s refusal to sign off on a €90bn loan to Ukraine.

In February, Marco Rubio was candid about the extent to which the Trump administration was prepared to back Orbán. “I can say to you with confidence that President Trump is deeply committed to your success, because your success is our success,” the US secretary of state told Orbán at a press conference.

If Orbán were to face struggles, Trump would be “very interested” in finding ways to help, Rubio added. “We want this country to do well. It’s in our national interest, especially as long as you’re the prime minister and the leader of this country.”

Weeks later, reports began to emerge of the lengths that Russia also appeared to be going to in order to secure Orbán’s victory. The Washington Post reported that Russian intelligence operatives had proposed staging an assassination attempt on Orbán to bolster his chances of winning, while the Guardian found that disinformation networks with links to Russia were publishing content aimed at undermining Orbán’s main opponent.

It may be too soon to conclude that Russia and the US are on the same side, however, as their motivations are distinctly different, said Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

“For the Russians, having Orbán as the fifth column in the EU – as someone who can derail or block or slow down European decision-making or as a conduit for intelligence operations – is quite useful. He has rendered many services to the Russians over the years,” he said.

A hint of this support emerged after it was alleged that Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had routinely called up his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to pass on the details of confidential EU meetings. Szijjártó later acknowledged he had conferred with Lavrov, describing the conversations as “diplomacy.”

For the US, however, the “infatuation” with Orbán appeared to be rooted in ideology, said Rohac. “For Russia I think there is a real strategic imperative in trying to keep Orbán in power,” he said. “For the US, I think it’s a sort of artefact of how the Republican party has transformed under Trump.”

He pointed to a 2019 letter to Trump, whose signatories included Rubio, in which the US senate committee on foreign relations expressed concerns about Hungary’s “downward democratic trajectory” and the country’s close relationship with Moscow.

“There was a time when Republicans understood what was going on in Hungary and were able to push back against this sort of uncritical infatuation with Orbán,” said Rohac. “And I presume there are still some in Congress who understand what is really going on and how Hungary is not a reliable partner. But they’re just much quieter now.”

Late last month the spotlight was on these voices after a bipartisan pair of US senators said they had introduced legislation calling for sanctions on senior Hungarian officials if the country’s leadership continued to obstruct aid to Ukraine or rely on Russian oil and gas.

Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a statement: “When the rest of Europe is rightfully weaning off Russian energy, Hungary has doubled down.”

She called on the Trump administration to hold all of its allies to the same standard. “It is beyond belief that vice-president Vance is reportedly planning on visiting Hungary to provide an electoral boost to a corrupt government that continues to help fund Russia’s war machine,” said Shaheen.

Just how successful the US and Russia would ultimately be in propping up Orbán remains to be seen. As Hungarians grapple with economic stagnation, political scandals and fraying social services, most polls suggest that Orbán’s Fidesz party continues to trail behind the centre-right Tisza party, led by Péter Magyar.

Beyond electoral success, however, Rohac saw a broader message in the Trump administration’s support for Orbán, one that he said Europe needed to consider carefully.

“I’m almost reluctant to say it, but I think Europeans at some level have to worry about whether, in the same way that Russia interferes in European elections quite regularly, we should not expect Elon Musk with X or other US platforms to also kind of weigh in on these election campaigns,” he said. “I don’t think it was a concern that people had – that these things could be weaponised against European democracies – but I think it’s a concern that people ought to have in the age of Trump.”