Robert Fico: A divisive figure sympathetic to Putin

Robert Fico is a populist who staged a political comeback last year.

The 59-year-old has previously been compared to former US president Donald Trump.

But his election victory last autumn meant NATO also had its first leader who was sympathetic to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Critics have voiced increasing fears Mr Fico would abandon Slovakia’s pro-Western course.

This would follow the direction of Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban.

Thousands of people have repeatedly held protests across Slovakia against his policies.

Mr Fico and his SMER, or Direction, party secured nearly 23% of the votes at the polls in October.

He is known for foul-mouthed tirades against journalists and has campaigned against immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.

The prime minister has previously opposed EU sanctions on Russia – and has been against Ukraine joining NATO.

He believes the US and other nations should use their influence to force Russia and Ukraine to strike a compromise peace deal.

Mr Fico also repeated Mr Putin’s unsupported claim that the Ukrainian government runs a Nazi state from which ethnic Russians in the country needed protection.

The politician founded the SMER party in 1999 and has served as the nation’s prime minister for over 10 years across three different spells.

With a campaign based on overturning austerity reforms, Mr Fico started his first four-year spell as the country’s leader in 2006.

He returned as leader in the parliamentary elections of 2012, but failed in an attempt to win the presidential election of 2014.

In 2016, despite winning the parliamentary polls, Mr Fico’s party was unable to secure a majority and after a multi-party coalition allowed him to remain as leader, he resigned in 2018.

Sat in a makeshift shelter on the outskirts of a frontline town in eastern Ukraine, the soldier – callsign “Zaur” – shared some rare, good news: new ammunition appeared to be arriving.

He did not know the precise details but said fresh supplies started to be delivered about a week or two earlier.

This was making a difference for his artillery team as they fought to defend Chasiv Yar from advancing Russian forces.

Follow latest: Missiles launched at Crimea

“It allows us to do our job, to hold off Russian soldiers, to restrain them, and also to destroy them when they attempt counterattacks,” Zaur said.

Ukrainian troops have been losing ground in the Donbas and now face a reopened front in the northeastern region of Kharkiv as they run short of ammunition and weapons following delays in the delivery of munitions from their allies, in particular the United States.

Even though American weapons are finally arriving to the frontline, the wait has been costly.

Zaur described the fight for Chasiv Yar, which has long been a Russian target. “It’s pretty intense. There are battles every day,” he said.

Should the hilltop town fall, it would give the invaders access to higher ground, enabling them to target artillery fire onto a wider area and putting cities in the remaining parts of the Donbas that are still under Ukrainian control at greater risk.

Asked whether Ukraine would manage to fend off the Chasiv Yar attack, the soldier, who commands the artillery unit, said: “We’ll try to hold on as much as possible, and time will tell…

“We’ll try our best… to do what’s necessary to survive.”

A Sky News team was shown around the artillery position under the cover of patchy woodland, next to some grassy mounds. Booms could be heard from distant fighting.

In a sign of the battle moving closer, soldiers had just finished digging a deep, narrow trench, which ran from the already-sheltered location of their self-propelled artillery gun – a 2S1 Gvozdika that fires 122mm rounds.

The trench had taken three days to dig. It had only been finished on the day we visited the area last week and – the soldiers said – had already been used to shelter from incoming rounds.

Russian troops have been trying to push into Chasiv Yar for the past year after seizing the nearby city of Bakhmut.

In recent weeks, though, they appear to have been edging closer – with a Ukrainian military medical stabilisation point forced to pull back to a city called Kostiantynivka.

Read more:
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As we looked at the artillery site, there was suddenly an ominous sound.

A powerful rocket – I was not able to see it – was flying overhead.

Over a radio held by a soldier, a voice could be heard saying: “It was coming straight at us, then veered towards a five-storey building. It flew low, damn it.”

Within minutes, we became aware of another danger – a drone.

One of the troops said he thought it was a Ukrainian drone but from our position, it seemed impossible to be sure.

We were told that the commander thought it best for us to leave.

As we walked – quickly – across some open ground between two patches of tree cover, one of the Sky News team thought they could hear a self-exploding attack drone in flight.

Again, it was not possible to know for sure what was making the noise, but then came the sound of an explosion, though the impact site was not in the immediate vicinity.

In a final reminder of the battle, as we headed towards our vehicle, it was possible to see a black dot hovering above the trees – yet another drone.

A woman who has accused the prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann of rape has described being attacked in her hotel room by a man holding a knife.

In emotional testimony on Wednesday, a woman recounted how a man dressed in black allegedly appeared in her hotel room in Portugal and raped her.

Christian B – whose surname cannot be published due to privacy laws in Germany – is accused of attacking the woman.

He also faces two other counts of rape and two of sexual abuse in his ongoing trial in Braunschweig.

The allegations do not relate to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Speaking in court, the woman described the moment she realised there was a man she did not recognise in her hotel room in the middle of the night.

“I felt a fear that I had never feared before, all the blood drained from my head,” she said.

“I turned to see who called my name, saw a man dressed fully in black, with a knife.”

She had been staying in Praia la Rocha, just along the Portuguese coast from Praia da Luz where Madeleine disappeared from three years later.

During the woman’s testimony, Christian B sat motionless next to his lawyer, staring straight ahead.

The woman described being raped by her attacker who then left her tied up, before escaping out via the balcony.

The police were called and she was taken to hospital by ambulance.

“Only occasionally did they (the police) quickly ask something in English. They didn’t pay much attention to me. I was not in a good headspace,” she told the trial.

Read more:
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Other charges facing Christian B include:

• Beating and sexually assaulting a girl aged at least 14 sometime between December 2000 and April 2006 at his house in Praia da Luz, Portugal
• Exposing himself to a 10-year-old German girl at a beach in Salema in the district of Faro in Portugal on 7 April 2007
• Exposing himself to an 11-year-old Portuguese girl at a playground in Bartolomeu de Messines in Portugal on 11 June 2017

Earlier in the trial, Christian B’s lawyer said the defendant “is using his right to remain silent”.

There are no formal pleas in the German legal system, and defendants are not obliged to respond to the charges.

Christian B is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old in Praia da Luz, the same town where Madeleine disappeared.