In recent weeks, Slovakia's leader has courted Vladimir Putin, labeled Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "the enemy," criticized the French prime minister, and accused his opponents of plotting a coup, all while suggesting a potential exit 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, News.az reports citing foreign media.
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.”
