Fico assassination attempt timeline
Tue 8:48 pm +00:00, 11 Jun 2024
May 10, 2024—Slovakia refuses pandemic treaty and IHR amendments despite a meeting with Tedros to convince Slovakia otherwise
https://enrsi.rtvs.sk/
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May 15, 2024—Slovakian PM Fico shot at very close range by multiple bullets by a former security guard and writer
May 16, 2024—The Atlantic Council just one day later tells us five things we need to know about the attempted assassination, attempting to gain quick control of the narrative. Did the Atlantic Council possibly know beforehand about the shooting?
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Showing no sympathy to the victim, who was at that time on death’s door, the Atlantic Council worries how the shooting will be used by Fico’s party to quell opposition. They also spin the shooting as due to “hate politics” (lone nut) rather than a political hit:
4. Based on what we know so far, what consequences could the shooting have for Slovakia’s politics?
Several members of Fico’s cabinet, including Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba and the minister of culture, Martina Šimkovičová, were quick to allege that the attack is a result of “the hate politics” spurred “by the opposition.”
Deputy Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic Andrej Danko, in the initial hours after the attack, stated that the governing coalition would take a tougher stance on journalists, although he was not clear on how the media had—directly or indirectly—contributed to the attack.
These are signs that the attack might be weaponized by Fico’s cabinet against the opposition, painting liberals as the villain. The cabinet is likely to use this tragedy to further its political agenda by, for example, curbing media freedom. I expect the incident to help Fico and his affiliates capture more electoral support in the future.
5. Is there any disinformation or misinformation spreading following the shooting?
Even before news of the assassination attempt had broken in the West, Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet RT, had already taken to Telegram to declare that Fico had been targeted for his pro-Russian sympathies. Within hours, tens of thousands of social media users were blaming the violence on some combination of EU and Ukrainian operatives. By early evening Slovak time, the Slovak Police issued a statement on their official Facebook page urging that both media institutions and the general public refrain from using comment systems, in order to stem the tide of dangerous speculation and hate speech.
The disinformation will get worse before it gets better. There has not been an act of violence in Europe of this sort in more than twenty years, and early reporting has linked the alleged assassin to both pro-EU and hardline Russian interests. In less than a month, citizens of twenty-seven EU member states will cast their votes to decide the future of Europe. Whatever the EU elections may have been about before, this is now part of the debate.
—Emerson T. Brooking is a resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council and coauthor of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.
June 5, 2024—Mr. Fico posted a pre-recorded speech and said it would be a “minor miracle” but he hopes to be back at work in about a month. He was able to leave the hospital on May 30 and is receiving outpatient treatment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/
Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia spoke publicly for the first time since being shot three weeks ago, blaming the opposition in a video released on Wednesday for what he described as a politically motivated assassination attempt.
In the recorded video address, which was posted to the official Facebook pages for Mr. Fico and his political party, Smer, the prime minister detailed his recovery and said it would be “a minor miracle” if he could return to work in a few weeks.
Mr. Fico, 59, was shot multiple times at close range on May 15 in Handlova, in central Slovakia, and required several rounds of surgery before he was released from a hospital on May 30. He has been recovering at his home in Bratislava, the capital.
He said in his address that the attack seriously harmed him, adding that he was receiving outpatient care. He said he hoped to return to work gradually by the end of June or early July “if everything goes as planned,” according to an English translation provided by Mr. Fico and Smer.
Mr. Fico said that “an activist of the Slovak opposition” had attempted to assassinate him because of his political views, describing the gunman as “a messenger of evil and political hatred.” Opposition parties have denied any connection to the shooting.
“I have no reason to believe this was an attack by a lone madman,” he said.
