When Ukraine found civilian mass graves in an space recaptured from Russian troops, Russia’s ambassador in neighboring Slovakia countered together with his personal discovery.
The mayor of a distant Slovak village, because the ambassador introduced final September, had bulldozed Russian graves from World Conflict I. Ambassador Igor Bratchikov demanded that the Slovak authorities, a sturdy supporter of Ukraine, take motion to punish the “blasphemous act.”
The Slovak police responded swiftly, dismissing the ambassador’s claims as a “hoax,” however his fabrication took flight, amplified by vociferous pro-Russian teams in Slovakia and information retailers infamous for recycling Russian propaganda.
A month later, the mayor of the village, Vladislav Cuper, misplaced an election to a rival candidate from a populist social gathering against serving to Ukraine.
As we speak, the identical forces that helped unseat Mr. Cuper have mobilized for a normal election in Slovakia on Sept. 30 with a lot larger stakes.
The vote won’t solely resolve who governs a small Central European nation with fewer than six million individuals, however can even point out whether or not opposition to serving to Ukraine, a place now largely confined to the political fringes throughout Europe, might take maintain within the mainstream.
The front-runner, in accordance with opinion polls, is a celebration headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister who has vowed to halt Slovak arms deliveries to Ukraine, denounced sanctions in opposition to Russia and railed in opposition to NATO, regardless of his nation’s membership within the alliance.
A powerful exhibiting within the election by Mr. Fico and far-right events hostile to the federal government in Kyiv would seemingly flip certainly one of Ukraine’s most stalwart backers — Slovakia was the primary nation to ship it air-defense missiles and fighter jets — right into a impartial bystander extra sympathetic to Moscow. It might additionally finish the isolation of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary as the one chief within the European Union and NATO talking out strongly in opposition to serving to Ukraine.
“Russia is rejoicing,” Rastislav Kacer, a former overseas minister and outspoken supporter of Ukraine, mentioned in Bratislava, the Slovak capital. “Slovakia is a good success story for its propaganda. It has labored laborious and really efficiently to take advantage of my nation as a wedge to divide Europe.”
Because of widespread public discontent with the infighting between pro-Western Slovak politicians who got here to energy in 2020, and deep swimming pools of real pro-Russian sentiment courting again to the nineteenth century, Russia has been pushing on an open door.
A survey of public opinion throughout Japanese and Central Europe in March by Globsec, a Bratislava-based analysis group, discovered that solely 40 % of Slovaks blame Russia for the struggle in Ukraine, whereas 51 % consider that both Ukraine or the West is “primarily accountable.” In Poland, 85 % blame Russia. Within the Czech Republic, 71 % assume Russia is accountable.
Daniel Milo, director of an Inside Ministry division geared toward countering disinformation and different nonmilitary threats, acknowledged that “there’s fertile floor right here for pro-Russian sentiment.” However he added that real sympathy rooted in historical past had been exploited by Russia and its native helpers to sow division and bitter public opinion on Ukraine.
These helpers embody Hlavne Spravy, a well-liked anti-American information website, and a bikers group known as Brat za Brata, or Brother for Brother, which is affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Evening Wolves bike gang in Russia.
A contract author for Hlavne Spravy, Bohus Garbar, was convicted of espionage this 12 months after being caught on digicam taking cash from Russia’s army attaché, who has since been expelled.
Brat za Brata, which has a big following on social media and shut ties to the Russian embassy, has in the meantime labored to intimidate Russia’s critics.
Peter Kalmus, a 70-year-old Slovak artist, mentioned he was overwhelmed up by members of the biker group final month after he defaced a Soviet struggle memorial within the jap metropolis of Kosice to protest Russian atrocities in Ukraine. In March, the bikers decreased to pandemonium a government-sponsored public debate concerning the struggle in a city close to the Ukrainian border attended by Mr. Kacer, who was then nonetheless a minister. Fiercely pro-Russian protesters bused in by the bikers, recalled Mr. Kacer, “jumped on the stage screaming and spitting at us.”
Many Slovaks, mentioned Grigorij Meseznikov, the Russian-born president of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Bratislava analysis group, “have an invented romantic imaginative and prescient of Russia of their heads that doesn’t actually exist” and are simply swayed by “lies and propaganda” concerning the West.
That, he added, has made the nation weak to efforts by Moscow to rally pro-Russian sentiment within the hope of undermining European unity over Ukraine. Slovakia is a small nation, Mr. Meseznikov mentioned, however “when you take even a small brick out of a wall it might crumble.”
That’s actually the hope of Lubos Blaha, a former member of a heavy steel band and the creator of books on Lenin and Che Guevara who’s now the deputy chief of Mr. Fico’s surging political social gathering, SMER. He’s additionally certainly one of Slovakia’s loudest and most influential Kremlin-friendly voices on social media and frequently denounces his nation’s liberal lady president, Zuzana Caputova, as a “fascist” and pro-Ukrainian ministers as “American puppets.”
“The temper in Europe is altering,” Mr. Blaha mentioned in an interview, describing the battle in Ukraine as “a struggle of the American empire in opposition to the Russian empire” that can’t be received as a result of Russia is a nuclear energy.
Insisting he was “not pro-Russia, simply professional my nation’s nationwide pursuits,” Mr. Blaha predicted that nations hostile to arming Ukraine would quickly “be within the majority whereas supporters of Ukraine might be in a small minority,” particularly if Donald J. Trump wins the subsequent presidential election in the US.
Within the run-up to Slovakia’s personal election, the often placid nation has been swamped by heated accusations on all sides of overseas interference. Mr. Fico has accused NATO of meddling within the marketing campaign, whereas his foes have pointed a finger at Russia.
Describing Mr. Fico’s SMER social gathering as a “Malicious program” for Russia, Jaroslav Nad, a former protection minister who led a push to ship arms to Ukraine, claimed this summer time that, in accordance with intelligence studies, a Slovak citizen he didn’t establish had visited Russia “to obtain monetary sources to learn SMER.” However, citing confidentiality, he produced no proof, and his declare has been broadly dismissed as a pre-election smear.
Nonetheless, the Russian ambassador’s fabricated story of desecrated struggle graves highlighted Russia’s ability at fishing in Slovakia’s troubled waters. It additionally offered what Mr. Milo, the inside ministry official, known as “a really uncommon smoking gun” instantly implicating Moscow in scripting a pretend scandal. “They often act extra cleverly and check out to not get caught red-handed,” he mentioned.
Throughout a go to final week to the still-intact graveyard in Ladomirova, Mr. Cuper mentioned that in his view Russia didn’t care who received the mayoral vote there, however had noticed a superb alternative “to distract consideration from mass graves in Ukraine” and “current itself as a sufferer.”
When the ambassador visited Ladomirova, he met with Mr. Cuper’s bitter rival, a former mayor whom Mr. Cuper had accused of embezzling village funds and who was convicted of fraud in 2019. The previous mayor’s spouse, Olga Bojcikova, who declined to be interviewed, was on the time operating in opposition to Mr. Cuper, who was backed by pro-Ukrainian events, within the native election final October. She received.
The ambassador’s story of “razed” Russian graves, although debunked by the police, was, Mr. Cuper recalled, “blown out of all proportion” by Kremlin-friendly Slovaks, notably the Brat za Brata bikers.
The bikers posted incendiary statements on Fb denouncing the mayor’s “blasphemous act” and rallied its members to reply. This set off requires Mr. Cuper to be “executed,” “buried alive” and “flogged like a canine.”
Slovakia’s prosecutor normal, Maros Zilinka, who has an extended historical past of sympathy for Russia and hostility to the US, added gas to the hearth by saying that the mayor may very well be answerable for legal prosecution for a “morally reprehensible act” that wanted to be investigated.
Mr. Cuper mentioned he by no means touched the graves however had eliminated stone border markers as a result of they have been falling aside. Nor did he contact a discover board put up as a part of renovation work financed by Russia in 2014: It falsely described the cemetery because the resting place of 270 Russian struggle useless. The cemetery comprises the unidentified our bodies of troopers from varied nations, together with Russia, killed in a World Conflict I battle.
The ambassador’s story, he mentioned, was “totally unfaithful” however nonetheless “created a nationwide uproar.”
