Slovakia’s opposition sounds alarm over Russia tilt as election looms

Peter Pellegrini, one of the main candidates to become president of Slovakia. Photograph: Darko Bandić/AP

Slovakia risks moving further away from the west, government critics have warned, as a report alleged that a presidential candidate aligned with the country’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, had previously sought an invitation to Russia to boost his position at home.

Slovaks will vote in a presidential election on 23 March, in what many consider to be a test for the country’s democracy and future within Europe.

Since returning to power after winning the election last autumn, Fico has shifted foreign policy in a more Russia-friendly direction and taken aim at independent institutions at home, including the special prosecutor’s office and the public broadcaster.

“Given the attempt to concentrate as much power as possible within the executive, the fight for the presidency has become all the more important,” said Tomáš Valášek, a member of parliament from the opposition party Progressive Slovakia. “[The presidency is] one of the last remaining sort of levers of power that can be a check on the power of the executive”, he said on Friday.

While a plethora of candidates are running, two are expected to advance to a second round in April: Peter Pellegrini and Ivan Korčok.

Pellegrini, a former prime minister and now speaker of parliament, used to be a member of Fico’s Smer party. He now leads the Hlas party, which is in coalition with the prime minister. Korčok is a pro-western former diplomat and ex-minister of foreign affairs.

“The presidential election will decide if Slovakia truly stays in western club or joins Hungary or Belarus,” Eduard Heger, a former prime minister, said on Sunday. “Our new government has turned Slovakia on the Kremlin side,” he said.

The fear, Heger stressed, is that Pellegrini “will act hand in hand with Robert Fico’s direction of foreign policy, which could have a devastating effect on Slovakia”.

With only a few days before the vote, a claim came to light on Tuesday that will put further focus on the future of Slovakia’s relationship with Russia.

The central European investigative outlet VSquare alleged that when Pellegrini was prime minister in 2020 he asked Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, for help arranging a last-minute trip to Moscow in the days before that year’s parliamentary’s election, to boost his credentials among pro-Russian voters in Slovakia.

According to VSquare, Orbán entrusted the task to his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, who communicated the request to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. In the end, Pellegrini was invited to Moscow a few days before the election, where he met Mikhail Mishustin, Russia’s prime minister.

VSquare’s report is based on intelligence material obtained by a European country and seen by VSquare, which shared it with the Guardian before publication.

VSquare sent requests for comment to the offices of Orbán and Pellegrini, as well as the Russian and Hungarian foreign ministries. At the time of publication, only the Hungarian foreign ministry had replied.

The Hungarian statement said: “If the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade receives a request to help establish or maintain contacts with other countries, and the request is not contrary to Hungarian national interests, we are always ready to help. This is called diplomacy.”

The ministry referenced a recent public statement by Szijjártó, in response to criticism of his links with Russia from Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister. “I think the prime minister of Poland would be surprised to know how long the list [is] of European politicians who have asked me in recent years to help them to make contact with the Russians,” Szijjártó said, adding that he had been happy to help.

Pellegrini was seen before Slovakia’s parliamentary election last September as a potentially moderating influence on Fico, but critics say he has not lived up to that role.

Milan Nič, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, said Pellegrini had “put the interest of being elected president above everything else. So therefore, he didn’t go into internal fights.”

“He needs Fico and the Smer voters – and their campaign machine – to be elected,” Nič added.

Slovakia’s internal politics are being watched closely in the region.

A senior central European official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Fico – who was previously known as a pragmatist – is now “more crazy” and that his foreign policy is perceived as a “domestic-driven” attempt to capitalise on voters who respond to Russia-friendly narratives.

Officials note, however, that Slovakia has not blocked any important EU or Nato decisions related to Ukraine.

Pellegrini did not respond to questions from the Guardian. Asked about the criticism directed at him, Katarína Roth Neveďalová, a member of the European parliament from Fico’s Smer party, said she believed he was “[a] very good and experienced politician who can represent the country well – and we can check his record already: nothing to worry about.”

But Valášek, the opposition member of parliament who is also a former Slovak ambassador to Nato, has said that despite Pellegrini’s promise to maintain warm relations between Slovakia, Nato and the EU, “we have fewer and fewer friends with each passing day”.

He added: “We’re now somewhere to the east of Viktor Orbán in our foreign policy terms. Mr Pellegrini hasn’t lifted a finger to stop that.”