Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, a prominent figure in the country’s politics known for defying fellow European Union leaders, was shot five times and seriously wounded in a city in central Slovakia on Wednesday. in what officials said appeared to be a politically motivated assassination attempt.
It was the most serious attack on a European leader in decades, prompting shock and condemnation from Slovak officials and other European leaders and stoking fears that Europe’s increasingly polarized and poisonous political debates had descended into violence.
The shooting was captured on videos, which showed Fico, 59, approaching a small group of people behind a waist-high metal barrier in a public square in the town of Handlova, when a man stepped forward and fired a gun. from just a few meters away. Five knocks were heard.
With the first blow, Fico doubled over at the waist and fell back onto a bench as more reports sounded. The security officers then shoved him into a black Audi several meters away, and almost carried him to the back door of the car. He was taken to a local hospital and flown to another for hours of emergency surgery.
Security officers at the scene of the shooting wrestled a suspect to the ground and officials said initial evidence pointed to political motivations. Authorities did not identify the suspect, whom Slovak media described as a 71-year-old poet. The country’s Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said more information would be made public “in the coming days.”
Slovakia’s president, Zuzana Caputova, whose position is largely ceremonial, said in a statement: “The shooting of the prime minister is first and foremost an attack on a human being, but it is also an attack on democracy.”
The shooting also prompted a chorus of condemnation from world leaders, including President Biden, who called it a “horrible act of violence,” and Russia’s leader Vladimir V. Putin, who praised Fico as a “brave and determined man.”
Fico began his three-decade political career as a leftist, but over the years he turned to the right, as did the party he founded, Smer. He was prime minister from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018, before returning to power in last year’s election. After being ousted amid street protests in 2018, he was re-elected on a platform of social conservatism, nationalism and promises of generous welfare programs.
Fico presented himself as a bellicose fighter of the common man and an enemy of liberal elites and immigration from outside Europe, and aligned himself with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to oppose aid to Ukraine and challenge dominant views. within the European Union.
Domestically, his critics accused him of undermining media independence, opposed his efforts to restrict foreign funding of civic organizations, and called him a threat to democracy. They also accused Fico of trying to return Slovakia to the repressive days of the Soviet bloc.
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Fico was in Handlova for a government meeting, which was followed by a nearly hour-long press conference. He had just emerged from those events when he was attacked.
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Slovakia’s parliament suspended its meetings and said it was “significantly” strengthening its security measures. Some of Fico’s parliamentary allies suggested that his Liberal opponents had created the atmosphere for the shooting.
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Michal Simecka, president of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party, said he shared the “horror” of the attack and emphasized that the attacker was not a member of his movement or connected to his party in any way.
Pavol Strba and Gaya Gupta contributed with reports.