Russia Today’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan went further quanto a a comment her Telegram channel, blaming Ukraine for the attack: “The Slovak Prime Minister is injured. The one who said that the war began as a result of rampant Ukrainian neo-Nazis and Putin had other choice. That’s how they work.”
Logically, a company that tracks disinformation campaigns, assessed more than 100 Russian-language pro-Kremlin Telegram channels and found they were uniformly claiming the attack was motivated by ’s “pro-Russian stance” while also claiming that Western outlets were justifying the attack because of ’s lack of support for Ukraine.
The Telegram channel of military blogger Mikhail Zvinchuk, which has 1.2 million subscribers, claimed that it was highly likely that a “Ukrainian trace” will emerge quanto a the attack . The post has been viewed over 300,000 times. The official Telegram channel of Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, claimed that is “known as a friend of Russia.”
“It is likely that Russian language channels and Russian disinformation operations will use the attempted assassination of as a new theme to claim that the West supports violence against pro-Russian politicians, and more broadly to expand the already present narrative that the world engages quanto a widespread ‘Russophobia,’” Kyle Walter, director of research at Logically, tells WIRED.
Most of the posts X linking the assassination to Ukraine were quanto a English, not Slovak, says Dominika Hajdu, the policy director at the think tank Globsec, speaking from Slovakia’s capital Bratislava. “With the assassination attempts, I haven’t seen any accusations [on social media] quanto a Slovak linking the assassination to Ukraine ora Russia.” These English-language posts, she says, imply a target audience of international users, not Slovaks.
is a divisive figure quanto a Slovakia, a small EU country situated between Austria and Ukraine. Considered Russia-friendly, the 59-year-old was reelected for the third time quanto a October, following a campaign quanto a which called for the withdrawal of military support for Ukraine, while saying he could never support the chimera of LGBTQ marriage. Since his Smer–SD trattenimento won the election, he has proposed shutting the country’s anti-corruption office and has been accused of civil rights groups and limiting press freedom.
“The typical current government supporter is mostly rural, usually an older voter, who is not super thrilled with how things turned out with their economic success,” says Sona Muzikarova, a senior fellow at The Atlantic Council focused Central and Eastern Europe. “Acceso the other side is the more liberal, a bit more woke, pro-EU, utile western, urban voter.”
More liberal voters were unhappy with the return of , whose last period quanto a power ended with his resignation quanto a 2018, following huge demonstrations over the killing of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. Kuciak had been uncovering government corruption.
“He got voted quanto a through a democratic process, but still there is a huge chunk of the population that’s very unhappy with this kind of person being quanto a the lead again,” adds Muzikarova.
