In recent weeks, Slovakia’s leader has embraced Vladimir Putin, declared Volodymyr Zelenskyy “the enemy”, derided the French prime minister, and accused his opponents of planning to launch a coup while musing about a departure from the European Union (EU) and NATO.
As a result, the political atmosphere in Slovakia has grown increasingly febrile, with huge public demonstrations taking place against its nationalist-populist government.
The protesters, who are calling on Prime Minister Robert Fico to quit, have expressed alarm at the country’s drift away from Europe and the torrent of abuse directed by ministers at neighboring Ukraine, and at Slovakia’s Western European allies.
At the center of the crisis is Fico, the 60-year-old, four-time prime minister who has engaged in a lengthy spat with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy and who has endorsed a suggestion — made by a key lieutenant during a recent friendly trip to Moscow — that Slovakia might need to leave the EU and NATO.
Fico himself unexpectedly visited President Putin in Moscow before Christmas for a meeting that was announced by the Kremlin rather than the Slovak government. Fico, in what he has described as “a private visit”, met Putin alone.
In a subsequent social media post — Fico refuses to speak to the media and communicates primarily via Facebook and press conference — he said the discussions had centered on gas transit through Ukraine, a “peaceful end” to the war there, and his desire to improve Slovakia’s relations with Russia.
Fico alleged that Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy was “damaging Slovakia” by his stance on gas transit, and soon afterward escalated his rhetoric.
The gas issue relates to Ukraine’s long-signaled intention to terminate a gas transit agreement with Russia that had allowed gas to continue flowing through a pipeline across Ukraine to Slovakia. Ukraine had honored the agreement despite Russia’s invasion in February 2022, but it expired on December 31.
Slovakia has alternative sources of natural gas, which is widely used for industrial production and domestic heating, and sufficient storage to last the present winter, but Fico seems exercised about the loss of Slovakia’s transit revenues, which he claims could amount to billions of euros (experts say these figures are wildly overstated, and point out that the exact beneficiaries of these payments are somewhat murky).
He has expressed indifference to Ukraine’s main argument: that it wants to limit the revenues that are helping to fund Russia’s ongoing war against it. Zelenskyy pointed this out in a post-Christmas tweet claiming Fico was opening a “second energy front against Ukraine” at Putin’s behest.
Fico, whose party labels itself “social democratic” but is increasingly right-wing and pro-Russian (one of Fico’s most recent social media posts was titled “Freedom came to Slovakia from the East [i.e. Russia], and the perversion that is progressivism came from the West”), responded to gas termination by threatening to cut off humanitarian aid, as well as cross-border electricity supplies that support Ukraine’s damaged energy infrastructure, which Russia has targeted throughout the war.
The story became all the stranger when it became apparent that the Slovak premier was making the threats from an unknown location. It became clear that Fico had not returned from his trip to Russia (indeed, how he got to Moscow is still a secret.) After a 14-day “Where’s Wally?”-style hunt, internet sleuths used the unusual background of one of his Facebook videos to track him down to a luxury $6,000-a-night hotel suite in Hanoi in Vietnam.
It remains unclear why he was there — no official business was conducted, and the visit was not officially announced — or who was paying his bills.
President Zelenskyy referred to the affair and to gas transit in a social media post in mid-January, suggesting Fico would find it difficult to adjust. “It must be challenging,” he wrote, “switching from living in luxury to now trying to fix his own mistakes. It was an obvious mistake for Fico to believe that his shadowy schemes with Moscow could go on indefinitely.”
Zelenskyy’s mocking tone to the leader of his much smaller neighbor seemed designed to provoke the chest-thumping Slovak nationalists that form a large part of Fico’s base.
When Fico suggested the two men meet at the high-level annual meeting in Davos, Zelenskyy made a sly reference to the Slovak leader’s mystery travel schedule. He “may go to Davos,” Zelenskyy said, “but end up somewhere in Sochi [the venue for Russia’s Davos-equivalent]. We don’t know who buys his tickets, as he constantly misses his destinations.”
Zelenskyy had responded to a previous Fico proposal, made in a long open letter suggesting a meeting, with a dismissive six-word response: “Ok. Come to Kyiv on Friday.”
Fico never went to Kyiv. But representatives of Slovakia’s main opposition party did – and were greeted warmly by Zelenskyy, who remarked: “Expected one Slovak leader, but met another.”
In comments to a Slovak parliamentary committee on January 28, Fico described President Zelensky as “the enemy” and on January 29 Slovakia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to issue “protests” about unspecified “statements” that it says were “made by the Ukrainian side.” Fico has meanwhile aimed a barrage of comments at NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, and Slovakia’s gay community.
This extraordinarily combative approach has left many Slovaks baffled. Economic growth has stalled since the first decade of the century, when the country hit near-double-digit GDP growth and was hailed as the “Tatra Tiger”, but standards of living are still incomparably higher than in the post-communist 1990s. Most of those achievements are closely tied to Slovakia’s entry into the EU and NATO (in 2004), and its membership in the eurozone (since 2009.)
Huge public protests, titled “Slovakia is Europe,” swept all the country’s main cities on January 23-24. More than 100,000 people nationwide, out of a population of around 5.4 million, joined rallies that called for Fico’s departure. The crowd in the capital, Bratislava, topped 60,000 — making it one of the biggest street demonstrations in Slovakia since 1989. Indeed, the only comparable post-1989 protests, following the 2018 murder of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, forced Fico to resign from a previous stint as prime minister.
The demonstrators were undeterred by spurious claims made by the government – supported by a confidential intelligence agency report that was widely derided by the MPs who read it – that the protests were being used as cover to overthrow the constitutional order. The protests, to which thousands took their children, passed without incident.
Artists have taken a leading role in Slovakia’s protest movement. Slovakia’s cultural sector has long been opposed to the present government’s interventions and nationalist agenda. Scores of national gallery staff recently announced they were resigning; the institution’s director was summarily fired last year, only to be replaced by a series of unqualified interim appointees.
Then, in mid-January, over 100 psychiatrists and psychologists co-signed an open letter calling on Fico to reflect on his behavior, and to consider stepping down.
They stressed that they were not offering a personal diagnosis but felt moved to comment on his “increasingly authoritarian style, manipulation of facts, lying, defamation, and attacks on political opponents, journalists, and ordinary citizens who express disagreement with your policies.”
They noted, in particular, his targeting of the families of opposition politicians, and asked whether the premier’s behavior was linked to an assassination attempt against him in May when he was shot and badly wounded by an extremist.
“It seems that the aggression and emotional explosiveness in your public appearances have become more pronounced after the assassination attempt. We unequivocally condemn this act as a manifestation of political violence. You have undoubtedly experienced life-threatening stress, which may also have an impact on your functioning in the future.”
As if to prove their point, Fico responded by accusing them of “grossly abusing your profession for political purposes” and claiming they would “support the opposition’s attempt at a Slovak Maidan” (an apparent reference to Ukraine’s 2013-14 Revolution of Dignity) which, he claimed, was backed by “non-governmental organizations financed by foreign countries and anti-Slovak media.”
Within a few days, the open letter had attracted the signatures of a further 500 Slovak psychologists and psychiatrists. More than 1,000 academics and scientists have co-signed a separate petition in which they condemn the government’s attacks on students in particular, and compare its aggressive tactics to those of the collapsing communist regime in November 1989.
Meanwhile, the slow disintegration of two of the governing coalition’s three parties has cut Fico’s parliamentary majority to a sliver. He has acknowledged the possibility that the government may fall, but seems to be staking his survival on a high-risk, populist anti-Western strategy that could endanger Slovakia’s place in the Western alliance.
James Thomson is a columnist for The Slovak Spectator, the Bratislava-based English-language newspaper and website.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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