Robert Fico, 59, has played a central role in Slovak politics since it gained independence in 1993 and has served as prime minister longer than any other leader.
The country gained its independence after the so-called Velvet Revolution, a series of popular, non-violent protests in 1989 against the Communist Party in what was then still Czechoslovakia.
Fico, who had been a member of the Communist Party while in power, founded the Smer party in the late 1990s and began the first of his three terms as prime minister in 2006, serving for four years before moving to the opposition after of his coalition. he lost an election. Slovakia is a landlocked country of around 5 million inhabitants.
The Smer party, which started on the political left but has increasingly adopted right-wing views on immigration and cultural issues, has governed as part of a coalition. Much of the international debate about Fico’s leadership in recent years has focused on his ties to President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Slovakia’s southern neighbor.
Fico returned to power in 2012, but resigned as prime minister in July 2018 following mass protests over the murder of a journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, who had been uncovering government corruption. The protests, which shook the country, were the largest seen since the Velvet Revolution; The protesters demanded the resignation of the government and new elections.
Slovakia ranks high in independent assessments of press freedom, but protesters also sought deeper changes in the country Fico had overseen.
He returned to power in last fall’s election, forming a coalition government after winning about 23 percent of the vote, having campaigned against sanctions imposed on Russia after it began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Not a single round of the country’s ammunition should be sent to Ukraine, he had told voters.
That stance, in a country where pro-Russian sentiment had been historically significant, worried EU leaders in Brussels, who said they feared Slovakia could form a pro-Russian alliance with Orban and, potentially, Italy’s leader Georgia Meloni. , which would prevent support for Ukraine in the European Union. At the time, it was also seen as a sign of the apparent erosion of the pro-Ukrainian bloc that Europe had formed after the invasion.
Slovakia’s military contributions to Ukraine were insignificant compared to countries such as the United States and Great Britain. But last year it became one of several European Union countries on Ukraine’s borders to block imports of its grain, fearing it could undercut Slovakia’s farmers.
In April, a Fico ally, Peter Pellegrini, won the election to become president of Slovakia. The position is largely ceremonial, but analysts said the victory strengthened the control of Russian-friendly political forces in Central Europe, as Pellegrini opposed providing military and financial aid to Ukraine.