Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, a prominent politician in the country and known for defying fellow European Union leaders, underwent hours of emergency surgery Wednesday after being seriously shot in a town in central Slovakia, officials said. This was apparently a politically motivated assassination attempt.
His deputy, Tomas Taraba, told BBC that the operation seemed to have gone well. “I guess in the end he will survive,” he said.
The shooting was the most serious attack on a European leader in decades, sparking shock and condemnation from Slovak officials and other European leaders and stoking fears that increasingly polarized and venomous political debates in Europe have erupted into violence.
The events were captured on videos, which showed Mr 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 a simple point of view. a few meters away. Five detonations could be heard.
At the first blow, Mr. Fico doubled at the waist and fell backwards onto a bench as more reports rang out. Security officers then pushed him into a black Audi a few meters away, carrying him halfway to the rear door of the car. He was taken to a local hospital and flown to another for surgery.
Security officers at the scene of the shooting tackled a suspect to the ground, and officials said initial evidence pointed to political motivations. Authorities have not identified 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.”
Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, whose position is largely ceremonial, said in a statement: “The assassination 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 drew a chorus of condemnation from world leaders, including President Biden, who called it a “horrific act of violence,” and Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin, who hailed Mr. Fico as a “courageous and strong-minded man.”
Mr. Fico began his three-decade political career as a leftist, but over the years he shifted to the right, founding the Smer party. He served as prime minister from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018, before returning to power in last year’s elections. After being defeated in street protests in 2018, he was re-elected on a platform of social conservatism, nationalism and promises of generous social programs.
Mr. Fico presented himself as a pugnacious fighter for the common man and an enemy of liberal elites and extra-European immigration. He aligned himself with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in opposing aid to Ukraine and challenging dominant views within the European Union.
Domestically, his critics have 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 Mr. Fico of seeking to return Slovakia to the repressive era of the Soviet bloc.
Here’s what else you need to know:
-
Mr. Fico was in Handlova to hold a government meeting, which he followed with a press conference lasting almost an hour. He had just come out of these events when he was attacked.
-
Slovakia’s parliament suspended its meetings and said it was “significantly” strengthening its security measures. Some of Mr. Fico’s parliamentary allies suggested that his liberal opponents created the atmosphere conducive to the shooting.
-
Michal Simecka, president of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party, said he shared the “horror” of the attack and stressed that the attacker was neither a member of his movement nor linked in any way to his party.
Pavol Strba And Gaya Gupta reports contributed.
