Will Slovakia Refuse To Help Ukraine After Victory Of Pro-Russian Party?
- 2.10.2023, 20:28
A Slovak political scientist explains.
Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, may become Prime Minister of Slovakia. His party SMER took first place in the voting results, gaining 22.9%.
How could Slovakia's course change? The website Charter97.org asked the Slovak political scientist, president of the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) in Bratislava Grigorij Mesežnikov about this:
— These are elections that, as you know, ended with the success of Robert Fico’s SMER party. In fact, this is political revenge for the man who, during his reign, led Slovakia into the swamp of corruption, clientelism and authoritarian politics. This is the man who proposes that Slovakia move away from the pro-Western course in its foreign policy.
It is clear that he does not have any strength to withdraw Slovakia from the European Union and NATO. He does not offer this, but he built part of his election campaign on the refusal to help Ukraine militarily, that is, by supplying weapons, blocking Ukraine’s path to the European Union and NATO. He also promised political revenge on the opposition, civil society, and the media.
After Fico creates a government (I think it will not take much time, he has enough partners to create a coalition), he will begin to implement his program. The question, of course, is whether he will be able to do this. There is a very strong opposition in Slovakia, civil society, and the majority of the population still supports our Western foreign policy.
Therefore, everything will not be as simple as it seems to him now. But the fact that Fico will try to do this is quite obvious.
Unfortunately, it turned out that there is a part of the population, especially older people, people living in rural areas, those who do not feel sufficiently protected from the social consequences of the pandemic, these people managed to get Fico into parliament as a winner.
He received 23% of the vote, it is clear that this is not a majority. But the situation has developed so that Fico can unite in a coalition with people who left SMER at one time. This is the second social democratic party “GLAS” (although none of the parties is actually what it declares). He will probably also unite with Slovak nationalists.
This unification will be enough to create a majority in parliament. Let's see how this turns out.
— Is there a danger that Slovakia will stop supplying weapons to Ukraine?
— Fico will try to do this, he spoke about this at all his election events. But Slovakia has already transferred most of its strategic weapons potential to Ukraine — these are S-300 complexes, MIGs, howitzers, self-propelled artillery units, and armored vehicles. That is, we have already provided a lot, but projects for the production of weapons for Ukraine continue, with Western allies helping us in this.
Slovak defense enterprises are now producing artillery mounts purchased with Western money. I think it is unlikely that Fico will somehow be able to cancel these deliveries, because these are commercial purchases. But he will strive to limit and, if possible, stop the production of weapons for Ukraine.
I will add that this government will not last forever either; the question is how stable it will be, whether it will remain in power. After all, Slovakia is a democratic country, Fico has already been prime minister three times and, of course, worsened the quality of our democratic system. He tried to use power to strengthen his influence and economic support for his loyalists. All this happened, but he failed to eliminate democracy. He won’t succeed even now, even though he is a revanchist, vindictive politician. Nothing good can be expected from Fico, but Slovak society is still experienced enough to resist such trends.