On 15 May 2024, Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico was shot and critically injured in the central Slovak town of Handlová, in front of its House of Culture after a government meeting.
He had run for office on an Eurosceptic platform, halting military aid to Ukraine and pushing for friendly relations with Russia, while criticising NATO and the United States.
At the time of his shooting, his cabinet was introducing proposals to eliminate a special anti-graft prosecutor and take greater control of the public broadcaster RTVS.
[10][11][12] Amid the increasing polarisation of Slovak politics, media coverage, and society, Fico published a video message on 10 April 2024 in order to temper tensions: "The Progressive Slovakia voters are cursing government politicians in the streets and I am just waiting to see when this frustration, which is deepened by Denník N, Sme, and Aktuality, will turn into the murder of some of the leading government politicians."
[23] He underwent an emergency operation that lasted five hours,[10] and Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba stated that he is expected to recover.
[36][37] According to the Minister of Interior Matúš Šutaj Eštok, Cintula stated during police interrogation that his decision to conduct the assassination was made after the presidential election in April.
In this book, Cintula praised the programme of the far-right People's Party Our Slovakia and professed understanding of mass murderers in cases of perceived governmental failures,[42][45][46] in particular regarding the 2010 Bratislava shooting.
[47] In January 2016, Cintula appeared in an event organised by a small far-right pro-Russian paramilitary group called Slovenskí Branci [sk] (Slovak Recruits),[48][49][50] disbanded in 2022.
[49] In the 2019 Slovak presidential election, he showed support for social liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS) candidate Zuzana Čaputová.
[39] Interior Minister Šutaj Eštok stated that preliminary investigations revealed the gunman was a "lone wolf" who had a political motivation for the assassination attempt.
[58] According to Interior Minister Šutaj Eštok, police were also investigating a theory that Cintula was not a "lone wolf", but a member of a group that swayed him to shoot Fico.
[61] Vice Chairman of the National Council Ľuboš Blaha confirmed the shooting during a legislative session on the overhaul of RTVS, which was later suspended,[12][62] and blamed political opposition and liberal media.
[65] Zuzana Čaputová, Slovakia's outgoing president, called the shooting "brutal and ruthless", and expressed shock for the attack and solidarity with Fico.
[11] On 16 May, Čaputová and Pellegrini appeared together and reiterated calls for calm, adding that the leaders of the country's major political parties would hold a meeting in an effort to "reduce violence".
[citation needed] More specifically, Fico claimed that political opposition from the left showed "violent or hateful excesses" against his democratically elected government over the belief that a West-focused foreign policy was the only acceptable approach, especially concerning the Russo-Ukrainian war.
He also lamented what he claimed was silence and lack of outcry by international organizations to the assassination attempt due to not aligning with his Ukraine policy, believing that the "right to have a different opinion has ceased to exist in the European Union".
He asked the "anti-government media" and foreign-funded non-governmental organizations to not try to downplay what he explained caused and fueled the assassination attempt, and that any more animosity by his opposition would inevitably lead to more victims.
[88] On 12 June, Fico's government unveiled a series of measures to improve security for politicians and other important individuals in response to the assassination attempt.