Slovakia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Robert Kaliňák, has disclosed that the country’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, is out of immediate danger but remains in intensive care four days after he was shot by a gunman.
Fico, 59, was shot on Wednesday while walking to greet supporters after a government meeting in the central mining town of Handlová.
“He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Robert Kaliňák told reporters.
“We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis,” Kaliňák said outside the hospital in the central city of Banská Bystrica, where Fico is being treated.
He added, “We all feel a bit more relaxed now.”
Kaliňák added that Fico would stay in the Banska Bystrica hospital for the time being, adding that his condition was still too serious to allow him to be transferred to a hospital in the capital, Bratislava.
Nonetheless, he noted, “We are all convinced that his physical condition is so strong that we can expect a further recovery day by day, even if the road to recovery will take several weeks.”
Kalinak said that the government would carry on without Fico “according to the programme he has outlined.”
Kaliňák said earlier that Fico had suffered four gunshot wounds, two light, one moderate and one serious.
Affirming Kaliňák’s statement, the Deputy Head of the hospital in Banská Bystrica, Milan Urbáni, told journalists, “Based on the adviser to the medical consultation this morning, we can state that the patient is currently not in a life-threatening condition.”
He stated, “However, his condition is still very serious and he will need a long time and rest to recover.”
Slovakia’s Interior Minister, Matúš Šutaj-Eštok, said that if one of the shots “went just a few centimetres higher, it would have hit the Prime Minister’s liver.”
Fico’s shooting was the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader in more than 20 years and has drawn international condemnation.
Political analysts and lawmakers say that it has exposed an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate both in Slovakia and across Europe.
The suspected gunman, identified by Slovak media as a 71-year-old poet and former security guard, Juraj Cintula , has been charged with attempted premeditated murder and was put in pre-trial detention by a special penal court on Saturday, May 18, 2024.
A court spokesperson said that Slovakia’s specialised criminal court ordered the detention of the suspect after prosecutors said they feared he could flee or carry out further crimes.
The suspect can appeal against the order to the supreme court.
Investigations Launched To Ascertain If Suspect Is A “Lone Wolf”
Moreover, the Interior Minister revealed that officials are investigating the possibility that the suspect may not have been a “lone wolf” as previously believed.
Estok said that an investigation team had been set up, which would also look into whether the suspect acted as part of a group of people that had been encouraging each other to carry out an assassination.
According to him, one factor suggesting the involvement of other persons was that the suspect’s internet communications were deleted two hours after the assassination attempt, but not by the suspect and most likely not by his wife.
He said that this indicated that “the crime may have been committed by a certain group of people.”
Estok noted that the suspect was angered by the government’s Ukraine policy.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Slovakia was one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, but Fico halted arms deliveries to Ukraine when he returned to power, his fourth time serving as Prime Minister.
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