The man who shot the Slovak prime minister

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot several times in Handlova on Wednesday. The Slovak Prime Minister was transported by helicopter to the Banská Bystrica hospital in a life-threatening condition but now is expected to survive. The assassin was taken into custody and his identity has since been revealed.

The incident took place in front of the cultural center of the city, about 150 kilometers northeast of Bratislava, where Robert Fico’s cabinet had held a government meeting and then met with his supporters.

The assassin’s name is Juraj Cintula. He comes from Léva and was born in 1953. He is one of the founders of the LK Dúha (Rainbow) cultural association. When the club was transformed into a civic association, he became its president. He wrote three books of poetry. He is member of the Slovak Writers’ Association.

According to what we know so far, Cintula is constantly described as a radicalized left-wing, ultra-liberal thinker by those who knew him closely. The paradox of the situation is that Cintula eight years ago planned to found a political party called “Movement against Violence.”

Previously, he was a security guard in a shopping center and had a permit to carry weapons. When Fico left the cultural centre where the government meeting was held, the assassin got close to the prime minister. Fico moved to shake his hand, but Cintula pulled out a gun and shot him several times.

According to local reports, three or four shots hit the Slovak prime minister. The shots hit Ficó’s chest and stomach.

The bodyguards quickly put him in a car and took him to the helicopter. According to our information, Fico was conscious throughout the journey. Despite the fact that the Slovak police hermetically sealed off the hospital, they even took away the mobile phones of the doctors. But the information leaked that the shots to the stomach caused the biggest problem.

The Slovak prime minister was operated on at 9pm Central European time. The operation took hours. Slovak Defenae Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinák said that “the prime minister has several gunshot wounds and his condition is very serious and life-threatening.”

At the hospital, the Slovak minister of the onterior spoke for the first time about the fact that the assassination was politically motivated. He first hinted that a hate campaign caused by internal social tensions could be related to the assassination.

Let’s see the details: According to the portal of the Hungarian-language daily published in Bratislava, Juraj Cintula is a committed sympathizer of the pro-Russian paramilitary group Slovenskí Branci (SB). In 2016, Cintula regularly attended the organization’s meetings, as evidenced by photographs. The paramilitary group’s Facebook page lists him as a writer and publicist, and several of his writings have been published.

In his writings, Cintula criticized refugees and the Slovak state and openly supported the organization. The serious contradiction of the situation is that the paramilitary group held commemorations in uniform at the grave of Jozef Tiso, the president of the fascist puppet state that between 1938 and 1945 was called the First Slovak Republic.

Also making the whole situation somewhat confusing is the paramilitary group’s logo, which looks a lot like that of the Nazi youth organization Hitlerjugend. This was reported by the English-language Slovak news portal VSquare. Új Szó also reported, referring to the Markíza television channel, that Cintula stated shortly after his arrest that he had been planning the assassination for a month because he did not agree with the government’s policy.

Cintula’s state of mind also raised questions. In one of his poems, he wrote: “In my dreams, I shot pribs, killed cells.” The unofficial translation comes from the Hungarian weekly HVG. [Ed.: Perhaps he was referring to the DNA binder PriB?]

After all this, I consider it a wrong approach to connect the assassination with Fico’s decision not to give more aid to Ukraine. All the more so because Slovak society is quite pro-Russian. Let’s not forget that Bratislava still celebrates the occupation of the Slovak capital by Soviet troops during the Second World War.

There is no significant anti-Russian sentiment in deep society. On the other hand, the average Slovak is upset by the possibility that the country will be dragged into the war. Slovakia now practically has no army, because the previous left-liberal government gave everything to the Ukrainians. It is typical of the situation that the defense of Slovak airspace is provided by the Hungarian Air Force.

Still, according to the indications, the assassination can be connected with the sharp internal political struggle in Slovakia. A month ago, Fico posted a video on social media in which he talked about how the progressive media would shoot him and his government. The video was leaked by the Austrian daily Der Standard.

In the video, which was part of the political struggle at the time, the prime minister criticized the texts of the progressive media, which he believed could lead to violence against government officials. “I only expect that this frustration deepened so intensely by Denník N. Smečko or Aktualita [that it will] escalate to the assassination of one of the leading government politicians, and I am not exaggerating one millimeter,” added Fico.

Peter G Feher is a Budapest-based journalist who writes for Magyar Hírlap. This report first appeared on Stephen Bryen’s Substack Weapons and Strategy and is republished with kind permission.