Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s efforts to regain the upper hand in the final weeks of Hungary’s election campaign showed cracks in the face of a rising tide of opposition support and a string of fresh political scandals.

The pro-Kremlin Orban has ditched highly scripted closed-door events for open-air stump speeches in an attempt to reverse his ruling party’s flagging poll numbers before April 12 elections. That tactic has failed to deliver so far, with the premier often encountering opponents shouting slogans against his Fidesz party in town squares and an especially tense confrontation late Friday with voters in the western city of Gyor.

The encounters are some of the strongest displays of public animosity he’s faced in his 16-year rule. A Median poll this week said Peter Magyar’s opposition Tisza party extended its lead to 23 points among decided voters, enough for a parliamentary supermajority to quickly roll back Orban’s self-styled illiberal system.

Anger with the Orban administration grew this week after a senior police detective went on the record to accuse the Hungarian intelligence services — which work under the direction of the prime minister’s office — of being behind the illegal dissemination of Tisza’s supporter database last year, which the government at the time had blamed on Ukraine.

While Orban’s government said the services had targeted alleged Ukrainian spies inside Tisza rather than the database in an operation, the whistleblower’s detailed account left many skeptical of an administration that has increasingly deployed Russian-style methods to maintain its power, including by targeting journalists and non-governmental organizations.

Orban has said the authorities’ actions are needed to defend Hungary’s sovereignty from what he calls foreign meddling.

The policeman’s interview with the Direk36 investigative news website went viral, notching up more than 2 million views in a country of just over 8 million eligible voters in days. A crowdfunding campaign started on Friday for the police captain, Bence Szabo, who had resigned from his post after emerging as a whistleblower, surpassed 500,000 euros ($576,000) in just a day.

Magyar, a former Fidesz supporter who established Tisza two years ago by calling out corruption and mismanagement, has called it the “most serious national security scandal” since the end of communism and has likened it to a “Hungarian Watergate.” He’s vowed to oust not just Orban but the system he’s built by removing key political loyalists including the president, top justices and the heads of the media regulator and the state audit office.

The developments come amid mounting scrutiny of Orban’s close ties to Moscow. Orban has doubled-down on Russian energy purchases after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, calls Kyiv the “enemy” and is blocking 90 billion euros ($104 billion) of EU aid to its eastern neighbor. Magyar has pledged to bring Hungary back into the European mainstream and to loosen ties with Russia.

The Washington Post reported last week that a unit of Russia’s foreign intelligence service has drafted plans to stage an assassination attempt against Orban to boost support for his campaign. The newspaper also said that Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto regularly briefs his Russian counterparts on the content of EU meetings.

Szijjarto initially called the report “fake news” but has been publicly touting his frequent conversations with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. The government has pressed charges against the journalist, Szabolcs Panyi, who also works for Direkt36, accusing him of spying, which the journalist denies.

At the same time, Orban has shown the ability to recover from previous crises and pollsters closer to the government still put his Fidesz party ahead of the opposition. His party also has a track record of mobilizing voters on election day, often organized by its network of mayors who hold a clout over locals in poorer regions.

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