Leading most polls is the populist SMER party of Robert Fico, who has pledged an immediate end to Slovak military support for Ukraine.Fico was forced to step down as prime minister following the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018."If SMER enters government, we will not send a single round of ammunition to Ukraine," he recently told supporters.What remains are commercial contracts for heavy weapons, including self-propelled howitzers ordered by Ukraine and its western partners.
The threat has set alarm bells ringing in Western capitals, as they scour the veneer of NATO and EU unity for signs of cracks. It's an echo of the rhetoric coming from Slovakia's neighbour and fellow NATO member Hungary, which says only diplomacy can secure peace.But for some, Fico's threat is a red herring.Bratislava has been a loyal and steadfast ally, supplying Kyiv with surface-to-air missiles and helicopters, even donating its entire fleet of retired MiG-29 fighter jets.
SMER did not to respond to requests for an interview. But party MP Lubos Blaha did speak to the BBC this summer, using language that sounded like it had been scripted in Moscow, not Bratislava."I can understand that Ukrainians wouldn't be happy that they will lose for example Donbas, or Crimea. But still, we need to be realistic," Mr Blaha said, describing the conflict as a "proxy war of the United States against Russia on Ukrainian land.""We need to stop this war - at whatever price," said Mr Blaha.Progressive Slovakia offers a vision of an open, tolerant, cosmopolitan society.
I can understand that Ukrainians wouldn't be happy that they will lose for example Donbas, or Crimea. But still, we need to be realistic," Mr Blaha said, describing the conflict as a "proxy war of the United States against Russia on Ukrainian land."Robert Fico, meanwhile, recently told a rally the war had started in 2014 when "Ukrainian Nazis and fascists started murdering the Russian population of Donbas."Neck-and-neck with SMER is Progressive Slovakia, a liberal, pro-western party that promises to maintain military aid to Ukraine."It's a very wrong assumption," she told me.
In March, Kudzko and her colleagues published a survey showing only 40% of Slovaks believed Russia was responsible for the war in Ukraine. Half saw the United States as a security threat. SMER's rhetoric appears to be falling on fertile ground.Back in Bratislava, I boarded a pleasure cruise on the Danube. Our diesel craft chugged gamely upstream towards Vienna and the west, before making a slow, 180-degree turn eastwards. Downstream lay Budapest, home to Mr Fico's apparent political mentor.
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