Fico predicts future attacks in video address: “I have no doubt they will occur.”

“Sorry that I survived, but I’m back,” Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was severely wounded in a shooting attack in May, posted to social media earlier this week to “notify” the liberal media and opposition.

A few days before publishing the post, on July 5, which is a public holiday in Slovakia, he briefly appeared at national celebrations at the ruins of the castle in Bratislava, which were only for selected and vetted people, in particular politicians, church officials and ambassadors. It was his first public appearance, except for a video from early June that he posted shortly before the European elections, in which he claimed that they wanted to kill him for his political views. During his speech at the July celebrations, in which he emphasised the contributions of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the Greek brothers who are credited, for example, with the Christianisation of the Slovaks, he praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his recent trip to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin, and called for building a wall against liberal ideologies. Three days later, he posed in a field near Trnava along with tractors, combines, and farmers.

On Thursday, July 11, the prime minister returned to his preferred way of communication and recorded a video in which he claimed that similar attacks, like the one he experienced during the government’s off-Bratislava meeting in Handlová, would happen again.

“I have no doubt that they will occur,” said Fico.

He added that the alleged desire of the “liberal opposition and their media”, referring to the media that dares to write critically about Fico’s fourth government, for Fico not to return to politics after the attack, for his government to fall, and for early elections to occur, did not come true.