Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico shot and gravely injured
Fico was transported to a hospital by helicopter. His office said the “next few hours” would be decisive.
By Emily Rauhala and Ladka Bauerova
Updated May 15, 2024 at 2:24 p.m. EDT|Published May 15, 2024 at 9:44 a.m. EDT
Security officers move Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico into a car after a shooting in Handlova, Slovakia, on Wednesday. (Radovan Stoklasa/Reuters)
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, was in “critical condition” and still undergoing surgery hours after being shot, government officials said at a hospital news conference on Wednesday evening.
Doctors are still “fighting for Robert Fico’s life,” Defense Minister Robert Kalinak said.
“He has multiple injuries and his condition is extremely serious,” Kalinak said. “We are still praying for good news, but we don’t have that news yet. He’s been in the operating room for 3.5 hours. His condition is very complicated.”
The shooting took place in the central town of Handlova, where the prime minister had attended a government meeting at the Palace of Culture. News video showed him striding with his entourage toward members of the public who were standing outside. He was shaking hands with people, reaching across a chest-high metal barrier, when a man in a button-down shirt appears to start shooting at close range. The attacker can be heard firing five shots before being tackled by security officers in dark suits.
Slovakia’s outgoing president, Zuzana Caputova, said police detained the presumed shooter.
“An attack on the prime minister is first and foremost an attack on a human being. But it’s also an attack on democracy,” she said. She urged people to refrain from “hasty judgments” before more information is known.
The president-elect, Peter Pellegrini, who takes power next month, said the attack represented “a threat to everything that up till now adorned Slovak democracy.”
“If we express different political opinions with guns in the squares, and not in polling stations, we endanger everything we have built together in 31 years of Slovak sovereignty,” he said.
The lack of information about the shooter’s motives did not stop Fico allies from casting blame.
“This assassination attempt was politically motivated and the motivation was born immediately after the elections,” Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said at the hospital.
At an earlier news conference, Lubos Blaha, deputy chairman of Fico’s party, Smer, turned to opposition deputies and said, “This is your work.”
Andrej Danko, a coalition partner, blamed journalists. “Are you happy?” he shouted at reporters.
Leaders across Europe and around the world expressed shock and outrage at the attack.
“We condemn this horrific act of violence,” President Biden said in a statement. “Our embassy is in close touch with the government of Slovakia and ready to assist.”
Fico has served multiple stints as Slovakia’s prime minister, most recently returning to power after winning an election in the fall.
He was forced out in 2018 amid public outrage over the killing of a journalist who had been investigating ties between his associates and the Italian mafia. But he staged a comeback by capitalizing on growing skepticism about the war in Ukraine and frustration with a cost-of-living crisis.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was among those who condemned the shooting. “There can be no justification for this monstrous crime,” he wrote to Čaputová, as reported by Reuters. “I know Robert Fico as a courageous and strong-minded man. I very much hope that these qualities will help him to survive this difficult situation.”
Pavol Hardos, a political scientist at Comenius University in Bratislava, said the shooting spotlighted political polarization in Slovakia — and could deepen it.
“It’s too early to say what the ramifications will be, but some government politicians already said that this amounts to a declaration of war,” he said.
He said he worried that Fico’s party would use the attack as an argument to continue its effort to exert control over radio and television, for instance. “This will be a useful excuse for doing all the things they wanted to do,” he said. “They will be able to make the necessary steps even faster than they planned.”
Slovakia’s major opposition parties, Progressive Slovakia and Freedom and Solidarity, announced after the shooting that they had canceled a planned demonstration against the government’s proposed overhaul of public broadcasting.
Progressive Slovakia rejected any connection between the attacker and its party or movement, adding in a statement, “We are concerned about the further escalation of tension in society.”
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