By Athena Papakosta

Slovakia is in shock and so is Europe. At noon on Wednesday the prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, was shot several times in the town of Hadlova, 180 kilometers northeast of the capital, Bratislava, as he greeted the gathered crowd in front of a building where a government meeting had been held. Slovak politicians, as well as the country’s president, speak of an “attack on democracy”. The alleged perpetrator has been arrested, but the authorities have not yet made any official announcement about his identity.

In the images from her moment assassination attempt on the Slovak prime minister the man is seen raising his hand holding a gun and firing five times at Robert Fitzo, who collapses to the ground. Immediately the security men pounce on the assailant with the rest of the guard carrying the Slovak Prime Minister back to the car. Fico’s health condition is considered critical and he is being transferred to the larger, neighboring town of Banska Bystrica, east of Hadlova. There he undergoes a long surgery.

At a press conference early Wednesday evening, the country’s Minister of the Interior, Mataus Sutai Estok, stating that the Slovak Prime Minister was wounded in the stomach, emphasized that “initial information shows that the motive” for the attempted assassination of Robert Fico “was political.”

So far unconfirmed information from the Slovakian media reports that Mr the perpetrator is a man, 71 years old, writer and poet by profession, from the town of Levice. As reported, he had reportedly expressed a desire on YouTube to lead a political movement with his son speaking to Aktuality.sk and explaining that his father legally owned a gun but that he does not know why he did what he did He made.

In a video posted on platform X, the 71-year-old man is said to be speaking, while in custody, and stating that he did not agree with the government’s policies and especially with its stance against the media in Slovakia.

“The rhetoric of hate, which we observe in our society, leads to acts of hate,” emphasized the outgoing president of the country, Zuzana Tsaputova. For their part, Slovakia’s Defense Minister, Robert Kalinak, as well as its Interior Minister, spoke about the spread of hate speech on Social Media and called on Slovaks not to respond “to hate with hate”. Mr Estok, however, went a step further, accusing the media of contributing to the climate of hatred against Robert Fitzgerald, stating that “many of you were the ones who sowed that hatred”.

Robert Fitzo returned to power last September. In his first months as prime minister, Slovakia’s 59-year-old prime minister, who leads a populist-far-right coalition, froze military aid to Ukraine while introducing a draft law – similar to those in Russia and Georgia – on NGOs, which introduces the labeling of “foreign-backed organisations” – if they receive more than €5,000 a year in foreign funding, and a bill to reform public broadcaster RTVS to strengthen government control over it.

Thousands of citizens were protesting the government’s plans, while the opposition yesterday, Wednesday, had organized a new protest march, which, however, was canceled after the assassination attempt against the Slovak prime minister.

The attack was condemned by the president of the United States, Joe Biden, speaking of a “horrific act of violence”, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, describing it as a “monstrous crime” and the European Union.