On the afternoon of May 15, 2024, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico stepped out of a community center in Handlová, greeting a small crowd of supporters gathered behind a barricade. He moved toward them, extending his hand—then, gunshots rang out. Within moments, Fico collapsed, bleeding from multiple wounds as security officers tackled the shooter: 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula. Cintula, who left Fico in critical condition, was previously associated with pro-Russian paramilitary groups but had become angered by Fico’s pro-Russia policies. In a pre-trial detention order, Cintula said he “regards the current government as a Judas toward the European Union” and identified restoring military assistance to Ukraine as his main demand.
Cintula is far from the only one enraged by Fico and his Smer – Slovenská Sociálna Demokracia (“Direction – Social Democracy”) party’s pro-Russia stance. Since December 2024, anti-government protests, triggered after Fico’s visit to Moscow, have raged throughout Slovakia, drawing more than 60,000 people (out of a population of five million) into the streets to demand the Prime Minister’s resignation and chant, “Slovakia is not Russia, Slovakia is Europe.” Fico has openly questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty and has labelled the war a “proxy war” between Russia and the United States. His government has also sought to obstruct EU sanctions on Russia, a stance that has drawn praise from Moscow and deepened Slovakia’s alignment with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
The new European right’s alignment with Russia is well documented and widely discussed: Far-right French politician Marine Le Pen called for a “strategic rapprochement” with Russia in 2017; right-wing English politician Nigel Farage once said he admired Putin as a political operator; and senior figures of the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) have repeatedly criticized Western support for Ukraine. But this trend is also present on the left. Spain’s left-wing Podemos party has opposed continued military aid; Germany’s Die Linke (“The Left”)—currently in the midst of an electoral resurgence—has maintained a critical stance toward NATO and Western military intervention, advocating for closer ties with Russia. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine split Die Linke, and some prominent figures left the party in 2023 because of their staunch opposition to sanctions against Russia (which the party tacitly supported).
Many on the European left retain a deeply ingrained pacifist tradition rooted in anti-imperialism and Cold War-era nonalignment, which often casts NATO, not Moscow, as the primary global aggressor. Yet this worldview struggles to account for a revanchist Russia whose actions in Ukraine pose a direct threat to European sovereignty. For parties in countries like Slovakia—geographically close to Ukraine and historically familiar with Russian domination—such a posture may reflect a form of appeasement: the belief that diplomatic accommodation, rather than deterrence, is the surest way to preserve peace at home. However, this stance is geopolitical wishful thinking. The Western defense of Ukraine is not merely an altruistic defense of another state—it is also a defense of Europe’s borders and political autonomy. As military and economic support for Ukraine becomes more politically costly, the European left must reconcile its principles with the harsh reality that peace sometimes requires forceful resistance.
Many left-leaning parties understandably struggle to balance defense budgets with social welfare commitments. In fact, even left-wing parties that exhibit strong ideological support for Ukrainian independence may find themselves constrained by economic considerations when asked to provide billions in aid to Ukraine and bear the financial burden of continued sanctions against Russia. In France, political parties are divided over President Emmanuel Macron’s calls for increased military spending without a tax increase, fueling fears that social programs may face future cuts to accommodate the defense budget. In the UK, Westminster announced that international aid spending would be reduced from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of gross national income by 2027 to fund its defense budget hike, sparking concerns about imperiling global development initiatives and the UK’s soft power in the Global South. Two weeks later, the government announced a plan to save five billion pounds (£) on welfare spending by reducing the number of eligible disability benefit claimants and encouraging current claimants to enter the workforce, a proposal that has faced intense opposition from the left. Veteran Member of Parliament Diane Abbott, a vocal opponent of the welfare cuts, remarked that the working-class voters that Labour traditionally represents would look back on the policies “and think: is this my Labour party?”
While many left-leaning leaders elsewhere couch their reluctance in pacifist or economic terms, Fico’s Smer party has moved into explicitly pro-Russian territory. His government has questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty, blocked EU sanctions against Moscow, and echoed Kremlin talking points framing the war as a proxy conflict between Russia and the West. Unlike the UK Labour Party’s dilemma—how to preserve a moral commitment to Ukraine amid domestic austerity—Smer appears to be calculating that economic and geopolitical neutrality, if not outright alignment with Russia, serves Slovakia’s interests more directly. What may appear to be indifference from some leftist parties elsewhere becomes, in Slovakia’s case, a more deliberate repositioning.
But the public reaction to Fico’s policies suggests that Slovakia is far from fully committed to this path. The mass protests that erupted after his visit to Moscow signal that a significant portion of the Slovak electorate rejects his pro-Russian turn. Nevertheless, the persistence of Smer’s influence (the party’s approval rating as of April 2025 has not changed significantly since November 2024, before the visit) and the broader rise of left-wing parties expressing skepticism toward military aid for Ukraine raises the question of whether Slovakia is an outlier or the vanguard of a larger shift.
If parties like Smer continue to gain traction, they could accelerate the drift within the European left that erodes popular support for Ukraine. To maintain a unified front, EU parties must combat rising anti-Ukrainian sentiment on the left with the same vigor that they have for the right—or risk both sides of the political spectrum capitulating to Russia. To leftist skeptics, the argument must be reframed. Supporting Ukraine is not an endorsement of endless militarism—it is a stand against imperialism and the principle that borders can be redrawn by force. For Europe’s left, this is not an abandonment of domestic principle but a fulfillment of it. Whether Slovakia proves to be an outlier or a bellwether depends on how effectively pro-Ukraine parties can bridge this divide by acknowledging economic realities, countering misinformation, and insisting that solidarity with Ukraine is compatible with justice at home.