Slovak PM Fico: Fight Foreign Influence – But Only From the West ⋆ Visegrad Insight

Smer has embraced a criminally prosecuted extremist, Daniel Bombic, and labels critical citizens as threats

20 February 2025

Marcin Król Fellow

Fico’s government is escalating attacks on critics, discrediting civil society, and legitimising extremist voices. To counter disinformation from domestic actors, the EU must invest in well-resourced communication centres across all member states, with a focus on the most affected.

While Russian-backed actors are openly mobilising citizens to establish ‘partisan cells’ of resistance across Slovakia Fico’s government is focusing on fighting its domestic critics.

Rather than real threats, the National Security Council is addressing the Prime Minister’s fictitious claims about a coup allegedly organised by Ukrainian and Georgian actors. Robert Fico has recently sought help in his fight against the civic sector from Elon Musk, and his party Smer shamelessly aligns itself publicly with the criminally prosecuted extremist Daniel Bombic.

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Eva Mihočková

Marcin Król Fellow

Marcin Król Fellow 2024 at Visegrad Insight. She is an Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy SFPA, a media website operated by the Slovak Foreign Policy Association. She is also a member of Team Europe Direct and works as an investigative journalist for Stop the Corruption Foundation. Last year she was awarded the Journalism Award 2022 by the Open Society Foundation in Slovakia. Eva started her journalistic career in 1998 at Slovak Television. Since then, she has worked for major news outlets such as TA3 television, RTVS public broadcaster, Euractiv.sk, Plus7dní weekly, and Trend weekly, where she served as a reporter, moderator, and a member of the editorial office management team.