Who is Slovak populist prime minister Robert Fico?
Robert Fico is a populist leader 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 another leader who was sympathetic to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Robert Fico in ‘life-threatening condition’ after assassination attempt – follow live updates
Critics have voiced increasing fears Mr Fico would abandon Slovakia’s pro-Western course.
This would echo some of the concerns raised about Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, another NATO member.
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.
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Slovak PM bundled into car after being shot
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.
Mr Fico was shot and injured on Wednesday. Pic: AP
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 need 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.
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Slovakian president-elect Peter Pellegrini called the apparent assassination attempt ‘a threat to everything that has adorned Slovak democracy so far’
Born to a working-class family, Mr Fico graduated with a law degree in 1986 and joined the then ruling Communist Party.
After the 1989 fall of communist rule, he worked as a government lawyer, won a seat in parliament under the renamed Communist Party, and represented Slovakia at the European Court For Human Rights.
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.
As leader of the largest party following the October 2023 election, Mr Fico formed a coalition with Voice – Social Democracy (Hlas) and the Slovak National Party, and began his fourth term as prime minister.
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All three coalition parties are either leftist or nationalist and, having previously expressed anti-American views, he has spoken about what he called Western influence in Ukraine’s war which only led to Slavic nations killing each other.
His popularity among some, however, has been based on promises to protect the living standards of those left behind in a country where conditions for many are only slowly catching up with western Europe and where many hold relatively fond memories of a communist-era past.
Ukraine should make ‘compromise’
Earlier this year, Mr Fico reiterated his controversial belief Ukraine should give up territory to end the war with Russia.
In January, he told Slovak public broadcaster RTVS: “There has to be some kind of compromise.
“What do they expect, that the Russians will leave Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk? That’s unrealistic.”
In the same interview, he added Ukraine’s membership of NATO would “merely be a basis for World War Three” and Ukraine was “not an independent and sovereign country” which instead was under the “influence and control” of the US.
Protests were held in Bratislava this month over potential changes to broadcaster RTVS. Pic: Reuters
Protests against controversial changes to TV and radio
Two weeks ago, thousands of people demonstrated against his controversial overhaul of Slovakia’s radio and TV services.
Critics said it would result in the government taking full control of the media.
The proposed changes would mean the public broadcaster known as RTVS would cease to exist and be replaced by a new organisation.
“If Fico takes control of RTVS, it would mean a decisive step on the way towards Orban and Putin,” Michal Simecka, of the main opposition party Progressive Slovakia, told thousands of protesters in the capital Bratislava.
In April, Mr Fico refused to back the implementation of the EU’s new migration system in his country.
The bloc’s new pact set out new security and asylum procedures as well as proposed quotas.
He said: “We are saying unequivocally that you cannot order a country that it must accept, in the Slovak case, up to 300 migrants you know nothing about, or pay €20,000 per each.”
A woman walks up to the security guards outside a shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg’s inner-city district.
She looks around with confusion as they let her know the clinic is closed.
She tells us it has only been two months since she came here to receive her usual care.
Now, she must scramble to find another safe place for her sexual health screenings and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) – her regular defence against rampant HIV.
On the day he was sworn in as US president for a second time, Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing foreign aid for a 90-day period.
That is being challenged by federal employee unions in court over what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis”.
However the order is already having an immediate impact on South Africa’s most vulnerable.
Her eyes tear up as she processes the news. Like many sex workers in town, free sexual health clinics are her lifeline.
An HIV-positive sex worker shared her patient transfer letter from the same closed clinic with Sky News and told us with panic that she is still waiting to be registered at an alternative facility.
South Africa is home to one of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS epidemics. At least 8.5 million people here are living with HIV – a quarter of all cases worldwide.
Widespread, free access to antiretroviral treatment in southern Africa was propelled by the introduction of George W. Bush’s US President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003.
PEPFAR is considered one of the most successful foreign aid programmes in history, and South Africa is the largest recipient of its funds.
A sign for USAID on the clinic’s window
A shuttered USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg
The programme has now been halted by President Trump’s foreign aid funding freeze – plunging those who survived South Africa’s HIV epidemic and AIDS denialism in the early 2000s back to a time of scarcity and fear.
“That time, there was no medication. The government would tell us to take beetroot and garlic. It was very difficult for the government to give us treatment but we fought very hard to win this battle. Now, the challenge is that we are going back to the struggle,” says Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV in Soweto.
Nelly says access to free treatment has saved her and her 21-year-old son, who tested positive for HIV at four years old.
“It helped me so much because if I didn’t get the treatment, I don’t think I would be alive – even my son.
“My concern is for pregnant women. I don’t want them to go through what I went through – the life I was facing before. I’m scared we will go back to that crisis.”
Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV
South African civil society organisations have written a joint open letter calling for their government to provide a coordinated response to address the healthcare emergency created by the US foreign aid freeze.
The letter states that close to a million patients living with HIV have been directly impacted by stop-work orders and that a recent waiver by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio continuing life-saving assistance explicitly excludes “activities that involve abortions, family planning, gender or diversity, equality and inclusion ideology programmes, transgender surgeries or other non-life saving assistance”.
The shuttered clinic we saw in Johannesburg’s central business district (CBD) comes under these categories – built by Witwatersrand University to research reproductive health and cater to vulnerable and marginalised communities.
An activist and healthcare worker at a transgender clinic tells us everyone she knows is utterly afraid.
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USAID in turmoil: What you need to know
“Corner to corner, you hear people talking about this. There are people living with chronic diseases who don’t have faith anymore because they don’t know where they are ending up,” says Ambrose, a healthcare worker and activist.
“People keep asking corner to corner – ‘why don’t you go here, why don’t you go there?’ People are crying – they want to be assisted.”
South Africa’s ministry of health insists that only 17% of all HIV/AIDs funding comes from PEPFAR but that statistic is offset by the palpable disruption.
On Monday, minister of health Dr Aaron Motsoaledi met to discuss bilateral health cooperation and new US policy for assistance with US charge d’affaires for South Africa, Dana Brown.
A statement following the meeting says: “Communication channels are open between the Ministry and the Embassy, and we continue to discuss our life-saving health partnership moving forward.
“Until details are available the minister called on all persons on antiretrovirals (ARVs) to under no circumstances stop this life-saving treatment.”
A demand much harder to execute than declare.
“There is already a shortage of the medication – even if you ask for three months’ treatment, they will give you one or two months worth then you have to go back,” says Nelly.
“Now, it is worse because you can see the funding has been cut off.”
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