by WorldTribune Staff, May 15, 2024 Contract With Our Readers
Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico is reportedly in critical condition after being shot multiple times in an assassination attempt on Wednesday.
Fico, who recently won re-election, was in the central town of Handlova in the mountainous Trenčín Region on Wednesday afternoon.
Slovakian publication Denník N reports Fico was meeting members of the public at a local cultural center when shots rang out. A witness is reported to have said: “When the shots rang out, they were deafening” and that she had seen Fico fall to the ground with “bloody injuries on his chest and head.”
The suspected gunman, who was arrested at the scene, is a 71-year-old man from Levice, a historic town 50 miles to the south of where the attack took place, according to Slovakian media.
Denník N reports the alleged attacker is a poet and “member of the leftist Rainbow Literary Club.”
Fico, a strong proponent of border control and Slovakia for the Slovakians, has been called “Slovakia’s Trump” in the past for his opposition to mass migration to Slovakia and criticisms of unfair elections. He is also a Eurosceptic and a strong ideological opponent of the coronavirus lockdowns. He was arrested on live television in 2021 for openly defying the then-government’s Covid rules.
A staunch foe of globalism, Fico has also referred to various opponents and NGOs as following the instructions of the U.S. leftist billionaire George Soros.
“Another target has been Slovakia’s LGBT community,” The Guardian noted.
More recently, criticism of Fico from the European mainstream has focused on his opposition to the war in Ukraine, leading to some to accuse him of being “pro-Putin”.
Fico, for his part, strongly denied these assertions and stated he is not pro-Russian, just anti-war. Fico has recently suggested Ukraine should be willing to cede territory to Moscow to get peace, and has strongly rejected suggestions by French President Emmanuel Macron that NATO should deploy troops to Ukraine itself.
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