Peter Zeihan: Assassination Attempt on Slovakia’s Prime Minister

May 17, 2024

WWSG speaker Peter Zeihan reacts: On Wednesday May 15, there was an assassination attempt on Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico. At the time of recording, the PM was still in critical condition and there’s no clear political group or foreign entity claiming responsibility.

Slovakia has a unique political landscape and Robert Fico began his career in the midst of it. He entered the political sphere during the Cold War era and has seen the transition to present day as Prime Minister.

PM Fico has had a front row seat to as the rural-urban divide has unfolded and even taken advantage of it throughout his career. When the Soviet Union fell, those in rural communities felt they had lost everything, and they resented the urban areas for their Western drift. The urban areas feel that the promise of membership in the Western world will solve all their problems, and resent the rural regions wanting them to drag them back. There’s also been plenty of economic challenges to add fuel to the fire.

Take all of those factors of Slovakia’s complex internal dynamics and you get a volatile political climate that led to this assassination attempt on the Prime Minister.

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