Robert Fico is Slovakia's populist prime minister. He opposes the EU's sanctions on Russia and is one of the rare EU leaders to have visited Vladimir Putin since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But he has a pragmatic attitude towards Ukraine: Slovakia exports lots of ammunition to Ukraine's armed forces, and its businesses hope to profit from the country's reconstruction.
In December 2025 Fico made it illegal to criticise the Benes decrees—laws passed after the second world war by Czechoslovakia that confiscated the property of ethnic Germans and Hungarians and expelled most of them. Questioning the decrees is in theory punishable by six months in prison, though there is no sign the measure is being enforced. The law prompted protests among Slovakia's ethnic Hungarians, who number around 420,000. The main consequence, according to Zoltan Szalay, editor of Napunk, a Hungarian-language news site, is that ethnic Hungarians will probably not vote for Fico.
The incident strained relations with Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister and normally an ally in Brussels, where both men oppose EU support for Ukraine and its energy sanctions on Russia.
He looked at me as if I were a side dish he hadn't ordered.