Assassination Attempt: Slovak PM Robert Fico in Serious, But Not Life-Threatening Condition After Marathon Emergency Surgery

The Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is in a very serious but stabilised condition and is no longer at imminent risk of death after an attempted assassination, his party colleague said on Thursday morning.

Robert Kaliňák, the Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister of Slovakia spoke briefly outside the hospital where his party leader and the nation’s Prime Minister Robert Fico underwent emergency surgery on Wednesday afternoon. Kaliňák said Fico suffered “complicated injuries” and is in a “very serious” but now stabilised condition.

Just yesterday evening, Fico’s condition was still said to be life-threatening after the shooting and then evacuation by helicopter to the nearest large hospital. But by late evening, another one of Slovakia’s four Deputy Prime Ministers Tomas Taraba said “as far as I know the operation went well” and said he believed Fico would survive.

The director of the hospital also spoke at the press conference this morning, revealing that Prime Minister Fico had suffered “multiple gunshot wounds” and that the surgery to save his life lasted five hours under two surgical teams. Fico is now recovering in an intensive care unit, she said.

BANSKA BYSTRICA, SLOVAKIA – MAY 16: Slovakian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Robert Kalinak speaks to members of the media outside the F. D. Roosevelt University Hospital where Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was admitted to on May 16, 2024 in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. (Photo by Zuzana Gogova/Getty Images)

Fico was shot while greeting the public in a midland town of Handlova, where he had just hosted a cabinet meeting. The alleged gunman has been widely identified in Slovak media as 71-year-old “leftist” poet Juraj Cintula. These reports note the man’s previous calls against violence, his political activism, and his apparent involvement in the last decade with a pro-Russia militia group, although no motive has been definitely established.

TVNoviny reports police charged the gunman with “premeditated murder against a protected person” this morning. Per their report, if convicted the man faces 25 years to life in prison. He is reported to have told police he is proud of the shooting.

Police and Fico’s political colleagues say they suspect a political motive for what is being treated as attempted assassination of the head of government. Indeed, Right-wing publication Konzervatívny Denník Postoj (‘The Conservative Daily Post’) notes that just 35 days before the gunman struck, Fico himself warned that the polarisation in Slovakian society and hostile atmosphere in the media was creating a dangerous situation which could lead to a politician being murdered.

The Prime Minister said in April that the present political position was not merely disagreements of opinion, but rather a situation where supporters of the centrist-globalist political party Progressive Slovakia had become incapable of “tolerating different opinions”, but were happy to tolerate any kind of dirty tricks against their opponents in government. Citing King Svatopluk I, an important figure in Slovak national identity, Fico said his supporters would have to rely on each other to weather “malice, hatred and abnormality in basic ethical questions” from the opposition.

“And I’m not exaggerating even a millimetre”, Fico is reported to have said, blaming the rising levels of hostility on opposition media publications stoking up the emotions of progressive voters who lost the recent election. At the time, these comments were interpreted by that same media as an attack on the free press.

In words that may feel chillingly familiar to citizens of other countries where certain sections of the media and public find themselves unable to accept the result of a national election — and in this case one judged to be free and fair by international standards — Fico government ally Ľuboš Blaha vented his fury at the media stoking tensions in the country which, he said, led to the head of government being shot.

He said of the opposition mainstream media, Postoj claims: “You made us all targets. We all have families, children. Do we all have to fear for our lives now? Because you hated the fact that Slovaks chose [to vote for us in the September election] so much that you had to go after us like animals. And here you have the fruits of your activity… Because of your hatred, he is fighting for his life today”.

This polarisation in Slovak society and media and very clear division between Fico’s voters and the opposition who make him out to be “almost like a monster”, in the words of his Deputy Prime Minister, has clearly filtered through to the global media’s reportage of the assassination and their attempts to interpret Fico’s political positions.

The fact that to some Fico is a left-wing nationalist and to others he is a right-wing populist says more about the inadequacy of the left-right political scale to describe third-way politics and populists than it does about Fico himself. Fico has dominated Slovakian politics for decades and shows some Eurosceptic qualities, despite being the leader which in previous governments had led his nation into ever deeper union with Brussels, apparent contradictions that defy surface-level analysis.

He leads a left-wing party, Smer — Ľuboš Blaha, the deputy speaker of parliament and deputy chairman of Fico’s party is a Marxist philosopher who admires Hugo Chávez, for instance — but left-wingers from outside his camp claim Fico is a crypto-conservative because he opposes mass migration.

Fico has been called “Slovakia’s Trump”, although this is generally not meant as a term of endearment by those throwing the U.S. President’s name around in this context, as the anti-Fico faction accuse him of massive criminal conspiracy, cash corruption, wiretapping his opponents, and gangsterism, things they imagine he shares with Trump. The murder of a journalist investigating high-level corruption in 2018 is also frequently mentioned in the same breath as the Fico government by critics.

Attempts by the new Fico coalition government, which shares power between his left-populist Smer, the centre-left social democrat Hlas, and hard right-populist Nationalists, to reform the state this year have been interpreted as a move to destroy civil society to prevent his own alleged corruption being uncovered or prosecuted. In the past, Fico has spoken out against allegedly George Soros-funded activists and protests in the country, and has created a new law where organisations that receive more than $5,500 a year in funding abroad would be legally labelled as “organizations with foreign support”.

The government denies these criticisms, as it denies accusations that they are Putin stooges — another common claim — because they have called for the Ukraine War to be resolved by negotiation rather than total military victory for Kyiv. Fico asserts he is pro-Slovakia, not pro-Russia, and like everything else whether this explanation is accepted is basically split by party lines. Indeed, there seems to be absolutely no space for nuance on these matters, and abroad Fico is generally absolutely derided in the mainstream media as a Kremlin placeman holding totally unacceptable views.

Another matter of distaste to the international media peering into Slovakia is the fact Fico was strongly against coronavirus lockdowns, forced vaccination, and mask mandates. Indeed, he arrested on live television in 2021 for openly defying the then-government’s covid rules. Denying he may have had any conviction over this position, reports on the attempted assassination like that in Britain’s The Guardian, for instance, make clear the view this was pure political opportunism, grasping onto anything to revitalise his career while out of power.

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