Former prime minister Robert Fico campaigned as a left-wing populist, opposing continued military support for Ukraine and aligning with Russia against the United States.
BERLIN — As Slovakia's election winner Robert Fico begins talks to establish a coalition government, officials in the European Union and NATO — along with people throughout Slovakia's civil society — are worried about how Fico's pro-Russian, anti-American Smer party may govern.
After his party's victory on Sunday, with 23% of the vote, Fico reiterated his promise to not send any more military aid to Ukraine, but said he continues to support humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Kyiv. "And depending on how the elections in Poland work out, we will have possibly three countries in the region where democratic checks and balances would be disturbed and where policies typical for illiberal democracies would be adopted, and that would showcase a democratic decline in the region," says Katarina Klingova, senior research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Resilience at the GLOBSEC Policy Institute in Bratislava, the Slovak capital.
"A lot of civil society organizations are worried after the elections on Sunday," Klingova says."Civil society organizations have been at the core of attacks and smear campaigns and these kinds of attacks oftentimes get very personal."
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