Tibor Gašpar (in the cover photo, left), former police chief, now deputy chairman of the Slovak National Council, chairman of the Parliament's Defence and Security Committee, and father of the head of Slovak intelligence Pavol Gašpar, one of the highest-ranking figures in the Slovak defence and security establishment, travelled to Moscow on 12 January with a delegation of five MPs from the governing parties SMER-SD and SNS.
Officially focused on energy talks, the trip raises questions on Slovakia's growing ties with Russia. Gašpar had previously held a secret meeting with the Russian ambassador (in the opening photo, center), received at the Slovak National Council, presumably to discuss cybersecurity, further amplifying concerns about Russian influence within Slovak security institutions.
As the father of the head of Slovakia's intelligence, Gašpar's actions underscore fears of Moscow's growing influence within Slovakian state institutions. These concerns are further heightened by repeated institutional meetings with key Kremlin figures by Slovakian leaders. The most widely reported in the international media are, without a doubt, those that took place, including Prime Minister Robert Fico and Vladimir Putin. However, there have been many other high-level meetings.
Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár has met several times with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov; MEP Luboš Blaha (first two photos) recently even met with Dmitry Medvedev who went so far as to say: "We should try to inflict maximum damage every day on the countries that impose these restrictions on our country and all our citizens. Are they afraid that we will give weapons to the enemies of the Western world? For now, we should give them (to countries that oppose the West) all kinds of possible weapons, except nuclear ones. There should be no rules against our enemy. They should suffer for harming Russia". Thus, this month’s visit to Moscow, led by Tibor Gašpar, follows a pattern of Slovak officials systematically meeting, in a climate of great cordiality and friendship, with sanctioned Russian leaders, undermining Slovakia’s commitments to NATO and EU policies. These actions weaken national security and Western unity in the midst of Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine.
As if all this were not bad enough, during a session of the European Affairs Committee of the Slovak National Council, Prime Minister Robert Fico (photo below) declared: "Russia will never return Donetsk, Luhansk or Crimea. Never. But no one will recognize it. This is the reality. Do you know what will happen to Ukraine? Ukraine will lose a third of its territory and will be occupied by foreign troops. This is what Ukraine will get."
These statements also represent a clear break with Slovakia's long-standing alignment with EU and NATO positions, intensifying international concerns about the broader implications of Fico's openly pro-Kremlin rhetoric.
Recently, Rastislav Káčer, a former foreign minister and one of Slovakia’s most experienced diplomats, went so far as to suggest that Robert Fico might claim, using fabricated intelligence as a justification, that a coup attempt is underway. Using this pretext, Fico could ask Moscow to deploy Russian forces, framing their presence as a stabilizing measure.
Káčer compared this hypothetical situation to the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Soviet-fabricated narratives paved the way for foreign military intervention.
The former Slovak minister stressed that such a move would isolate the country, leaving it vulnerable to outside influence at a time of heightened geopolitical tension. Káčer also explains why this scenario is not entirely far-fetched. During the recent visit of the Slovak prime minister to Moscow, at one point “Fico is left alone with Putin. This is never done in diplomatic practice. There is always someone with the prime minister during delicate negotiations.”, adding: “At that moment, I thought, thank God that Zelenskyy and Ukraine are still holding out, because if we had such a land bridge today, if we really had free airspace for Russian paratrooper planes across Ukraine and Fico told Putin, ‘There’s a coup brewing here… I have intelligence evidence that proves it… Or, some Ukrainian saboteurs blew up some Slovak infrastructure… I need to prevent this coup. Send three paratrooper planes here,’ well, in one evening they could take over the parliament. Just look at the 1968 scenario, how terribly simple it was.”. Not only, “In a situation where – Káčer hypothesizes – Slovakia would have completely lost, due to its close ties with Moscow, the trust of its Western partners within NATO, no one would do anything to come to its aid in such a scenario”.
Is the scenario painted by Rastislav Káčer an exaggeration? Let's hope so. The government in Bratislava certainly suffers from political strabismus, because flirts with Moscow while remaining in NATO.
Photo: facebook / Kremlin - TASS