Attempted assassination of Slovak leader puts Europe on edge

HANDLOVA, Slovakia

A gunman shot Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, who is known for defying his fellow leaders in the European Union, multiple times at close range on Wednesday, in the most serious attack on a European leader in decades.

Mr. Fico was shot after emerging from the House of Culture in Handlova, a town in central Slovakia, as he greeted a small crowd in Banikov Square. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, then airlifted to another hospital for emergency surgery.

Hours later, the deputy prime minister, Tomas Taraba, told the BBC that Mr. Fico’s situation was no longer life-threatening, and he expected the prime minister to survive.

The gunman, identified by Slovak news outlets as a 71-year-old poet, was immediately wrestled to the ground by security officers.

The interior minister, Matus Sutaj Estok, said at a news conference that Mr. Fico was shot five times and that the initial evidence “clearly points to a political motivation.” Asked to name the attacker, he said, “Not today.”

The attempted assassination stoked fears that Europe’s increasingly polarized and venomous political debates had tipped into violence.

Mr. Fico began his three-decade political career as a leftist but over the years shifted to the right. He served as prime minister from 2006 to 2010 and from 2012 to 2018, before returning to power in elections last year. After being ousted amid street protests in 2018, he was re-elected on a platform of social conservatism, nationalism and promises of generous welfare programs.

Mr. Fico speaking to people in Handlova, moments before the shooting.Credit...

His opposition to military support for Ukraine, friendly relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other positions have put him outside the European mainstream. Like his ally Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, Mr. Fico has been a frequent critic of the European Union.

Like Mr. Orban and the Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, Mr. Fico has delighted in presenting himself as a pugnacious fighter for the common man, a forthright enemy of liberal elites and a bulwark against immigration from outside Europe, particularly by Muslims.

His critics have accused Mr. Fico of undermining the independence of the news media, opposed his efforts to restrict foreign funding of civic organizations and called him a threat to democracy. They accuse Mr. Fico of seeking to take Slovakia back to the repressive days of the Soviet bloc.

Mr. Fico’s political career appeared to be over after his ouster in 2018, but he found new support last year by promoting anti-L.G.B.T.Q. positions, attacking the European Union as a threat to national sovereignty and opposing the continued supply of weapons to Ukraine.

In his tenure as prime minister, Slovakia became the first country to stop sending weapons to Ukraine, though nonmilitary aid continued.