The elections in Slovakia, a country of 5.5 million people in Eastern Europe, may not seem particularly important at first glance, but the first impression is misleading, especially in light of yesterday's results. Because the victory of Robert Fico and his Samar (Direction – Social Democracy) party could, under certain circumstances, deepen the cracks in the European Union and, more immediately, affect the flow of Western aid to Ukraine in a war that is changing the world.
Fico, a two-time prime minister, has made no secret of his pro-Russian views, an expression of widespread sentiment in Slovakia. For example, he repeated one by one the false Russian narrative that "the war in Ukraine began in 2014, when the Nazis and Ukrainian fascists began killing Russians in Donbass and Luhansk." On the contrary, he opposed sanctions against Russia in 2015 and, throughout his election campaign, has now promised to end military aid to Ukraine. "Not a single bullet was sent there," he said a few weeks ago, as Slovakia so far delivered helicopters, fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine. He has also repeatedly argued that the only way is to bring the sides to the negotiating table – an avenue that does not even have a shred of agreement from Kyiv, which conditions all negotiations, among other things, on a complete withdrawal of the Russian army from its territory.
Unmanned vessel attack on Russian naval port in Ukraine
These calls echo those of his friend and close associate, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the only EU leader to have maintained ties with Putin and who so far has not missed an opportunity to be the exception to disrupt the consensus needed in EU institutions to help Kyiv. Like Orbán's worldview (and contrary to the EU's set of liberal values), Pizzo's campaign aimed its arrows against LGBT people, immigrants and even "George Soros's stirring." Orban was quick yesterday to congratulate Pizzo on the victory. "Look who's back," he tweeted. "It's always nice to work with patriots."
If Pizzo keeps his word and pursues a confrontational foreign policy, it will already be possible to see how a bloc of rogue states has emerged in the eastern European Union, consisting of Hungary, Slovakia and Poland – which, while almost as anti-Russian on the Ukrainian issue as the Ukrainians themselves, has also recently had a public confrontation with Kyiv over the wheat trade. "Pizzo and his potential partners admire Putin, like Orban, and his coming to power would be a threat to all of Europe," the Czech magazine Respect wrote last week.
Not yet "Urban 2"
On the other hand, nothing is yet certain, and at least on the issue of military aid to Kyiv, it is not at all certain that Pizzo will actually become Urban 2. First and foremost, Pizzo still needs to form a coalition, and if he succeeds, with the options available to him, it is not at all certain that he will be able to lead an isolationist policy. Second, he said he would not send another bullet to Ukraine, but did not commit that the local defense industry would stop helping its neighbor. The reason: Since the war began, the defense industry's revenues have quadrupled. In Slovakia's economic situation, the profits and jobs it provides are no small matter.
Didn't miss an opportunity to be an exception. Urban, Photo: AFP
Third, and this is perhaps the main point: some scholars doubt whether Pizzo has actually become a populist. The analyst Milan Nich of the German Council on Foreign Relations, for example, believes that Pizzo is an opportunist who would adopt any tool from the left or the right and attack the establishment, because his main interest is to entrench himself in office and gain immunity from corruption investigations. Other analysts point out that the extreme rhetoric was needed to ride on pro-Russian and anti-Western sentiment and exhaust voices in rural and rural areas. In particular, economic aid to Ukraine has served as a red sheet in a country where every eighth citizen is on the verge of poverty. But according to this logic, once Pizzo has won, and if he forms a coalition with moderate factions, he will return to the pragmatic Pizzo he once was. It won't take long to see if that assessment materializes.
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