A party headed by a pro-Kremlin figure came out top after securing more votes than expected in an election in Slovakia, preliminary results show, in what could pose a challenge to NATO and EU unity on Ukraine.
According to preliminary results released by Slovakia’s Statistical Office at 9 a.m. local time, Robert Fico’s populist SMER party won 22.9% of the vote.
Progressive Slovakia (PS), a liberal and pro-Ukrainian party won 17.9%.
Fico, a two-time former prime minister, now has a chance to regain the job but must first seek coalition partners as his party did not secure a big enough share of the vote to govern on its own.
I cannot fathom how Slovakians arrive at the conclusion that sucking up to Russia is in any way in their best interest?
I bet there’s a lot of Russian propaganda behind it, but how does reality not beat propaganda? It’s like a nation of 25+% anti-vaxxers!
I’d imagine corruption in government plays a huge role. Seems to be a lot of it these days.
It’s like a nation of 25+% anti-vaxxers!
Well… yes, actually.
Oh shit! I forgot some East European countries were extremely anti-vaxxer too.
Yeah, and covid helped them very much. Fico was seemingly on his way out but then covid happened, the current government was incompetent in many ways and people extremely irritaded by everything. Fico (among others) ramped up the propaganda and disinformtion campaign, told people what they wanted to hear and slingshoted himself back to popularity.
I think it’s important to point out, that “winning elections” does not mean that the majority of Slovaks support them. They just won as a party with most votes. (23% so not even a quarter)
They just won the mandate to form a government for which they’ll need at least two other parties to form a majority. The anti EU/NATO stance might be a problem here as it’s not universally shared among possible coalition partners.
It is misleading to draw such a strong “Slovakia is pro-russian country” conclusion based on a single party getting the most votes, because many of the other parties that are at the very least silent if not outright pro-nato/eu with significant amount of the votes.
Even comparison to Hungary is a huge stretch as Orbán’s party alone got more than 50% of the votes. As it is now, Smer has to form a coalition with other (in many ways more moderate) parties which is already not 100% given - it would not be the first time when the winning party ends up in opposition. And going forward they either avoid these friction points (so they end up acting more moderate) or they risk coalition breaking apart with early election or opposition forming government.
I don’t think they’re mainly pro Russian.
Maybe against NATO and US foreign policy.
Nowadays non G7 countries need to pick a side. And most have seen what American interference did to other countries.
For more information please visit: Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Afghanistan.
Well Smer is very much pro-Russian.
As usual CNN is making out of this a bigger deal than it actually is. These are slovak parliamentaries, so it’s not FPTP, therefore he didn’t “win” ( yet, anyway ). This seems to be just the social-democratic party’s growth from 19% in the last election to 23%, which would be in trend with growing conservative sentiment in europe. Besides, PS also grew from 8% to 18%, but that doesn’t generate as many clicks as “SLOVAKIA IS NOW PRO-RUSSIA!” so it’s barely a sidenote. Key takeaways are that they will have to seek coalition if they really want to pose a challenge to NATO policies.
shit.
EU sanctions will continue until national policy improves.
Not a supporter of the war but just noticed that western media is covering this with a sprinkling of their own propaganda. Just read telegraph’s piece on this. They seem to think that nato’s expansion is normal and just fine. And they also seem to call the presence of Nazi groups in Ukraine Russian propaganda.
There is clear propaganda war going on on both sides. Anti nato doesn’t neccesarily mean pro russia. A lot of western people don’t seem to be able to wrap their heads around this.
They seem to think that nato’s expansion is normal and just fine.
Damn NATO, forcing countries to join them.
