UNITED KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE

London handles the incident with the methodical caution of a country that has itself investigated subsea infrastructure sabotage. Sky News headlines Orban's words -- "act of sabotage" -- but frames them in quotation marks, marking clear editorial distance. The Independent calls them "powerful explosives" found "near a crucial pipeline" and notes "immediate political concern in Budapest, days before a national election."

British media does something no other country in the panel does: it places the sabotage accusation and the Hungarian electoral context in the same paragraph without ever saying one explains the other. This is systematic doubt journalism, a legacy of post-Iraq media culture.

Neither Sky News nor The Independent names a culprit. The word "Ukraine" doesn't appear in headlines, unlike Russian outlets. The words "false flag" don't either, unlike Ukrainian media. Britain reports an incident, not a verdict.

But the lack of depth is notable: no analysis of gas flows, no context on Hungarian elections, no mention of the Nord Stream precedent. The coverage is clean but shallow -- the UK isn't directly affected by Russian gas transiting through the Balkans.