We'll keep quiet until after the Hungarian elections – Vučić on explosives found near gas pipeline

“As for those who claim that the Serbian army wanted to interfere in the Hungarian elections – they should be ashamed of themselves,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said, according to N1, about the explosives found near the Turkish Stream pipeline in northern Serbia.

He added that he has never made a secret of hoping that Viktor Orbán would win the upcoming Hungarian elections, but it would never occur to him to use the Serbian army to interfere in another country’s election.

“And that is why we are keeping quiet. And it will stay that way until we know for sure what happened, and especially until after the elections in Hungary are over”

– he said, adding that “the person who wanted to carry out this plan held a military rank in their own country’s army, from which they defected to the territory of Serbia – among other places”.

“If there had been an explosion, it would have been impossible to prevent a major fire and massive explosions...We wouldn’t have been able to supply gas to Hungary for months. If such a thing had happened near our valve, we too would have been without gas for at least a month,”

the Serbian president said.

The Serbian press reported Sunday morning that suspicious items had been found near Trešnjevac, located by Kanjiža in northern Serbia, near the section of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline's section running between Serbia and Hungary. Police and military personnel were immediately deployed to the site, and shortly thereafter, Vučić announced that powerful explosives and a detonating cord had been found. The director of the Serbian Military Security Agency later announced that the explosives found near the gas pipeline were American-made.

Hungary's governing Fidesz party first said that this was an attack on the country’s sovereignty, and shortly thereafter, the incident was already being referred to as a terrorist attack. The Hungarian section of the pipeline was placed under military protection. Opposition leader Péter Magyar demanded that PM Orbán invite him to the National Security Council meeting as well, because “regardless of who it was that organized this provocation, the TISZA government will be the one to resolve the situation that it has created ". He also said that if it turns out that Viktor Orbán is using this issue for the purposes of their campaign, it will be an open admission that this is a premeditated false-flag operation. The financial world was not particularly affected by the threat; instead of a crash, the Budapest Stock Exchange opened with a positive outlook on Tuesday.