The new Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, who took office the day before, said that Bratislava will no longer provide military assistance to Ukraine.
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Pravda quotes Fico:
My Government’s position is that an immediate cessation of hostilities is the best solution we have for Ukraine. The European Union must transform from a weapons supplier to a peacemaker. It’s better to negotiate peace for 10 years than to kill each other for 10 years without any results.
Fico said this at a meeting of the parliamentary committee on European affairs. The prime minister also called the scenario in which Russian troops would be withdrawn to the 1991 borders unrealistic.
After a year of killing each other, the Russians have gained greater territorial gains than Ukraine. So explain to me what will happen in a year. We see that there is no military solution,” Fico added.
In addition, the prime minister said that he does not intend to support the introduction of new sanctions against Russia without assessing their impact on Slovakia and other EU countries. He also repeated his words that the war in Ukraine was caused by “attacks by Ukrainian fascists on civilians of Russian nationality,” writes Pravda.
Press Secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov, commenting on Fico’s words, said that Slovakia’s decision will not affect Ukraine’s armament.
Indeed, Slovakia did not have such a large share in the provision of weapons, so this is unlikely to affect the entire process, Kommersant quotes Peskov as saying.
The BBC Russian Service notes that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, Slovakia has been actively supplying the Armed Forces of Ukraine with weapons and has become an important link in the logistics chain of Western aid supplies. Thus, Slovakia transferred Zuzana-2 howitzers, Mi-17 helicopters and all 13 of its MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine. In April 2022, Slovakia transferred the S-300 air defense system to Kyiv.
In Slovakia, parliamentary elections were held on September 30, which was won by the Course – Social Democracy party. It is headed by Robert Fico, who has previously served as Prime Minister of the country twice. During the election campaign, he promised to oppose military aid to Ukraine.
In early October, the interim government of Slovakia announced that it had stopped sending military aid to Ukraine.
Who is Fico
A former communist, Fico, 59, was head of government from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018, and led Slovakia into the Schengen area in 2007 and into the EU in 2009. After the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova in 2018, the investigation discovered large corruption networks in which officials were also involved. Fico followed under pressure from mass protests.
The current snap elections took place after the collapse in December 2022 of the center-right coalition that took over power from Smer in 2020. She failed to cope with economic challenges, which led to the resignation of the cabinet led by Eduard Heger.
So, Smer-SD (“Course towards Social Democracy”) received a majority. During his two previous terms in government – 2006-2010 and 2012-2018 – Fico proved to be a pragmatic player on the European and transatlantic stage, without questioning the country’s commitments to either the EU or NATO. But his removal in 2018 and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine seem to have prompted Fico to change his slogans.
DW writes that Fico’s rhetoric began to take on the characteristics of extremist and far-right, as the leader of Smer-SD needed to regain authority in society.
Fico’s newfound Russophilia caused a resonance in the country, where some voters are nostalgic for the socialist era.
On the eve of the vote, most of the population believed that the West was responsible for the war in Ukraine. Among the Visegrad Four countries, it is Slovakia that is most skeptical about Ukraine. Already at the beginning of 2023, 52% of Slovaks negatively assessed the acceptance of refugees from Ukraine, and a third associated their presence with an increase in the crime rate.
The West directly correlates such changes in the consciousness of Slovaks with the Kremlin’s information attacks. European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourová called the Slovak elections an example of how vulnerable European elections are to “weapons of mass manipulation worth many millions of euros.” Brussels has threatened to fine social media giants Alphabet, TikTok and Meta if “they don’t do more to combat this problem.”
Slovakia has always been something of a dead end, like in the Habsburg Empire, or playing second fiddle, like Czechoslovakia during the Cold War.
Sympathy for Moscow has become for many Slovaks the result of disappointment in the pro-Western orientation of recent governments, which were so unsuccessful in domestic policy, Olga Dyarfašová, a political scientist at the University of Bratislava, told Radio Liberty. A lengthy quotation from this conversation should be given that explains the Slovaks’ adherence to Fico’s slogans.
Regional differences are very strong in Slovakia. For people from the hinterlands, the European Union is something distant: many believe that being in the EU has not had a positive impact on their lives. This is certainly not true, but it is not easy to explain to everyone how much money Slovakia received from the European budget. And part of society has a somewhat archaic psychology. One of my cultural scientist colleagues wrote a book in which he called the Slovaks “post-peasants.” This offended many, although being a farmer is wonderful. They talked about the importance of local connections in Slovakia – from family to community. Even corrupt relationships are often built on them. Politics largely reflects the state of society.
Russia is liked even after February 24, because it acts as a conservative alternative to the West. This part of Slovak society looks at Ukraine as a country that is blindly leaving in the “channel of the West.” Everything is as in the Kremlin manuals.
The Soviet invasion in 1968 was less tragic in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic. Both the leader of the Prague Spring, Alexander Dubcek, and Gustav Husak, who replaced him, were Slovaks. This sweetened the pill for many, and in 1969 the communist regime formally made Czechoslovakia a federation.
The country’s small-man syndrome has always given rise to distrust of external forces, whether Austrian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian or American. One could even argue that Fico’s skillful use of grievance is a defining characteristic of his politics, Politico writes about the politician’s victory.
Politico makes a pleasing conclusion for us: given how dependent the country is on the EU, a victory for populist Fico’s right won’t mean much.
Slovakia’s economy, which was called the “Tatran Tiger” in the early 2000s, is now in decline. Its GDP per capita places it at the bottom of the eurozone rankings with countries such as Latvia and Croatia. The Slovaks top the ratings only in terms of the size of the budget deficit (in 2023 it will reach almost 7%).
Fico promises his voters more social spending. This will not be possible without EU assistance, including €6 billion from the EU recovery fund. Any move aimed at deviating from the mainstream on fiscal issues will be met with a negative reaction from investors, which will lead to an increase in Slovakia’s borrowing costs.
This also fuels doubts that Fico will follow Orbán’s path and choose illiberal development of the country. Indeed, unlike Orban, whose Fidesz party rules with an absolute majority, Fico’s Smer will have to gather into a coalition extremist pro-Russian parties and his former ally, Peter Pellegrini, who has turned into an enemy. This politician became prime minister after Fico’s resignation in 2018.
Slovak politics, which has had five prime ministers in the last five years, will remain unstable. But it’s hard to imagine that the same people who took to the streets in 2018 and ousted Fico from power over what was effectively a political murder of a journalist will simply stand by and watch as their country follows Hungary’s dubious example.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.