Fascist-Leaning Putin Ally, Slovakia's Robert Fico, Looks To Be Surviving An Assassination Attempt

Fico with Putin

Slovakia is a tiny country in easterm Europe, formerly the “slovakia” in Czechoslovakia, the eastern part of that now disbanded country. It’s surrounded by the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and Austria. After World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved, Czechoslovakia was created but during World War II, the Slovaks were pro-Nazi and the Czechs were aligned with the Allies. The Czechs, for example, hid their Jews as best they could; the Slovaks turned them over to the Germans for deportation and execution. 

Czechoslovakia was able to end communism with the Velvet Revolution in 1989 but 5 years later the primitive Slovaks initiated a “Velvet Divorce” from the more advanced Czechs. Slovakia was basically a hellhole with not much to offer, although, now, as a member of the EU it has been slowly coming along.

Robert Fico is a nationalist politician who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2010, from 2012 to 2018 and was elected for a third time in 2023. Although a member of NATO, like Hungary, he maintains close ties to Putin. In 2023 he campaigned on ending military aid to Ukraine. His party won 22.95% of the vote, which made it the biggest party in parliament and he formed a coalition government and has been slipping into a traditional kind of Slovakian fascism.

He was shot in the head on Wednesday and remains in serious condition, although he is expected to survive. The Guardian reported that he’s a prototype populist and a divisive politician. “Now, with Fico in a parlous condition, this country of 5 million people stands on the brink. Whether or not the prime minister survives and is able to resume his office, the divisions already laid bare could lead to widespread civil unrest. It is still possible that the shock of Wednesday’s assassination attempt may enable wiser heads to prevail, for a government of national unity to be formed and for hostilities to be toned down. Given the statements of several of Fico’s ministers, blaming ‘the media’ and hostile elements, the omens do not look promising.” Fico is a very Trump-like figure— divisive, self-serving, corrupt.

Slovakia is no stranger to violence. In February 2018, Ján Kuciak, a young investigative journalist who had been looking into corruption involving Fico’s government, EU subsidies and the Italian mafia, was gunned down by contract killers at his flat outside the capital. His fiancee, Martina Kušnírová, an archaeologist, was murdered with him.

Their deaths shook Slovakia to its core. In the biggest demonstrations since the velvet revolution that brought down communism in 1989, tens of thousands of Slovaks took to the streets to express their fury. Eventually, Fico and his entire cabinet were forced to resign— not before he accused the US billionaire George Soros of fomenting the protests.

Hope arose from the horror, but that hope did not last long. In June 2019, an environmental activist and lawyer, Zuzana Čaputová, sensationally won the presidential election. Months later a new government was voted in, presaging change. Within weeks of it taking office, however, the pandemic began, and so did its troubles. Slovakia had four prime ministers in four years. Successive coalitions came and went, each struggling to cope with Covid, inflation, the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine.

Cue a remarkable return for Fico, who models himself on his friend Viktor Orbán, the leader of neighbouring Hungary. Like Orbán, he spent his most recent period in opposition moving further to the right, railing against the decision by the Slovakian government to send weapons to Ukraine. Per capita, Slovakia was one of Kyiv’s staunchest backers, becoming the first NATO country to send fighter jets.

While making a BBC radio documentary on the parliamentary elections in September 2023, I was struck, visiting several different regions, by the atmosphere of them-or-us denunciation and competing truths. One leading Fico ally, Ľuboš Blaha, told me in an interview for the programme that the Ukraine war was based around competing cultural values. Slovakia, he declared, did not want to be swayed by pro-gay “liberal fascists” defending Ukraine. Blaha is now deputy speaker of parliament.

Fico called Čaputová, his own head of state, an “American agent.” She in turn warned of an “information storm” from the right, supported by Russia. Ominously, after initiating legal action against him, she declared she had had enough and would not stand for a second presidential term.

The election campaign was dominated by two entirely separate narratives— Fico the putative dictator and Fico the proud patriot. The result was close, but he prevailed, his Smer-SD party winning the largest share of the votes and leading a rightwing coalition.

Within weeks it became clear that many of the worst fears of liberals were going to be realised. Fico carried out a 180-degree turn on Ukraine, stopping weapons sales (although, to be fair, Slovakia had given away all its existing stock, and that was replaced by more modern weaponry courtesy of NATO).

In Orbán and Fico, Putin now has two sympathetic leaders in the heart of Europe. Neither have any intention of leaving NATO or the EU, preferring to be an internal thorn.

The battle for Slovakia’s future will continue to be fought for and through the media. Liberal outlets are already feeling the pressure. The most heated battle, very much ongoing, is the government legislation to replace the public broadcaster,  RTVS, with a more pliant, “patriotic” one. Demonstrations against the move were scheduled for Wednesday evening and hastily cancelled after Fico’s shooting.

The tragedy for Slovakia is that many of its young mobile workforce are choosing to leave. Some are going across to the border to its neighbour, where the contrast is stark. In 2023, the Czech Republic elected as its president the staunchly pro-western Petr Pavel. For the moment at least, the bigger brother has chosen a different course.

Alena Krempaska is the program director at the Human Rights Institute, an advocacy organization based in Bratislava, Slovakia’s capital. She wrote an OpEd for the NY Times yesterday, Slovakia Is At A Dangerous Moment. “Slovakian politics,” she wrote, “are deeply polarized in ways that have tipped into rhetorical and even physical violence… But in large part, the hateful rhetoric— of which there is lots— is confined to the internet, and it has become normalized. Lawmakers, activists and journalists take it to be the price of participating in civic life. We reassure ourselves that those who write threatening messages online are not usually the ones who carry them out... But someone has now shot the prime minister. In retrospect, it seems that the hateful rhetoric was gradually, inevitably building to violence, and we are waiting in this dangerous moment to see what comes next. Either the attack will trigger harsh action from the government and make everything worse. Or cooler heads will prevail, and we will pause, pick up the pieces of our fractured country and try to put them back together.”

Fico with Orban