Robert Fico has turned Slovakia’s intelligence services into instruments of political manipulation, former Prime Minister Iveta Radičová warns. The Slovak Information Service (SIS), long plagued by corruption and political interference, is now actively used to shield the government, suppress dissent, and mislead the public. Faced with mass protests and a collapsing coalition, Fico and his allies orchestrated a disinformation campaign, branding peaceful demonstrations as an attempted “state coup” while intelligence agencies fabricated reports to justify his claims.
Radičová argues that SIS, historically compromised since the Mečiar era, has reached new depths of political abuse under Fico’s rule. The agency, she says, no longer serves national security but acts as a weapon of power, with its director, Pavol Gašpar, linked to Russian intelligence networks. Meanwhile, the government remains silent on Russian cyberattacks against Slovak institutions, choosing instead to promote absurd conspiracy theories involving foreign revolutionaries and assassination plots. Radičová insists there is only one solution: dismantle SIS entirely and rebuild it from the ground up. Slovakia, she warns, is no longer merely in crisis—it is a captured state, where intelligence services protect not the nation, but those in power.
Radičová warned that SIS has a long history of acting as a political tool rather than an independent institution. She recalled that during the authoritarian rule of Vladimír Mečiar in the 1990s, the agency was directly involved in organised crime and even murder. Although Slovakia has since undergone democratic reforms, she asserted that SIS has continued to fabricate intelligence reports to serve political interests rather than national security. Successive governments, including those of Mikuláš Dzurinda and Igor Matovič, have also struggled to control the agency and prevent its interference in political affairs.
Reflecting on her own tenure as prime minister from 2010 to 2012, Radičová stated that even then, SIS was an institution “almost impossible to trust.” She pointed to numerous past scandals, including the sale of security clearances and the Pčolinský affair, in which the former SIS director was accused of corruption. She also recalled how the intelligence agency played a role in the so-called “war in the police,” which further destabilised Slovakia’s law enforcement institutions.
The former prime minister was particularly critical of current Prime Minister Robert Fico, accusing him of deliberately misusing SIS to deflect attention from his government’s failures. She argued that Fico’s recent claim that mass protests against his administration constituted an attempted “state coup” was absurd and unsupported by credible intelligence. Instead, she contended that SIS reports used to justify such claims were produced for political purposes rather than as objective security assessments. According to Radičová, “one-third of SIS reports are nonsense, another third is just low-quality summaries of daily news, and only 10% contain valuable intelligence.”
Weaponising Intelligence to Suppress Dissent
It has now become undeniable that the Prime Minister, along with his government and the President of the Republic, conducted a calculated information operation against Slovak citizens to discourage them from participating in protests. This manipulation—an act reminiscent of Russian disinformation tactics—constitutes a gross abuse of power. Fico has misused the Slovak Intelligence Service and Military Intelligence, the state’s two most critical security institutions, to serve his own political interests rather than national security. In doing so, he has irreparably damaged their international credibility, undermining the trust required for intelligence-sharing with Slovakia’s allies.
At the centre of this abuse is Pavol Gašpar, the SIS director and a close ally of Fico, whose connections to Russian intelligence networks have raised serious concerns. His father, Tibor Gašpar, has openly engaged with Kremlin-linked figures, reinforcing suspicions that Slovakia’s intelligence institutions are being exploited not just for domestic political control but possibly for foreign influence as well.
She further criticised Fico’s broader approach to governance, stating that he systematically undermines Slovakia’s democratic institutions. She described his leadership as an attempt to dismantle the pillars of liberal democracy, concentrating power within the executive branch while weakening parliamentary oversight, judicial independence, and media freedom. By dictating when and how parliament meets, seizing control of oversight institutions, and attacking political opponents, Fico, in her view, is actively reshaping Slovakia’s political system. She noted that similar trends are visible in Hungary and other countries where populist leaders seek to erode democratic norms.
Beyond intelligence abuses, Fico’s government has remained silent on a series of cyberattacks targeting Slovak and Czech institutions—incidents that Czech intelligence has directly attributed to Russia. Despite these clear security threats, Slovakia’s leadership has not provided any transparency or accountability, further suggesting that national security has become secondary to political survival. Instead of addressing real security concerns, Fico and Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok fabricated an implausible narrative that tied bomb threats, cyberattacks, and an alleged assassination attempt into a single conspiracy involving “revolutionaries from Georgia”—a claim so absurd that it only further exposes the government’s willingness to manipulate state institutions for political gain.
Radičová concluded that reforming SIS within its current structure is impossible. The only viable solution, she insisted, is to dissolve the agency and create a new intelligence service free from political interference. “This is not an intelligence service that guarantees internal and external security,” she remarked, emphasising that trusting SIS in its current form “requires a great deal of imagination.”
After the mass protests on 24 January 2025, it is evident that Slovakia has once again become a captured state. The government, with the assistance of intelligence services, has executed a full-scale manipulative psychological operation against its own citizens. Despite Fico’s control over state institutions, one thing remains clear—120,000 people in the streets and tens of thousands more online have sent an unambiguous message: while his government may hold power, the people are the state.
Transcript of the above audio
Interviewer: In his theories about the “Maidanisation” of society, the Prime Minister has now dragged our intelligence service into the mix, along with its infamous past and, consequently, legitimate doubts about the credibility of the SIS. Can the current SIS report be trusted?
Iveta Radičová: Even from the little we have heard, it is clear that this is a politically commissioned report. This is not an intelligence service. This is not a service tasked with guaranteeing internal and external security. Trusting it? That requires a great deal of imagination. In my deep conviction, the only viable course of action regarding Slovakia’s intelligence service is to dissolve it and establish a new one from scratch.
Interviewer: Slovakia has just witnessed mass civic protests, likely the largest since the murder of Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, which ultimately led to the fall of Robert Fico’s previous government. Surprisingly, one of the most prominent advocates and promoters of these protests was none other than the Prime Minister himself. He held a closed-door parliamentary session when the opposition attempted to oust him and then walked into parliament brandishing an SIS report about what he describes as an attempted coup—a so-called “Maidan.”
Iveta Radičová: Since the very beginning of its tenure, Prime Minister Fico and his governing coalition have done nothing but systematically dismantle the separation of powers. The Prime Minister dictates when parliament will or will not convene, how it will or will not conduct its proceedings. He has completely upended the balance—executive power now dictates to the legislative branch, dismantling the system of checks and balances, eliminating oversight of power, attacking the media. Step by step, every pillar of democracy is being eroded.
The governing coalition is establishing an entirely new political system—something it signals not only through domestic policies but also through its foreign policy decisions.
Interviewer: You served as Prime Minister yourself. How credible is what the SIS is saying? After all, even you once remarked that their reports are often mere fabrications, stories concocted out of thin air—ones that many politicians are all too eager to believe.
Iveta Radičová: I must repeat my own words. I do not want to make myself out to be a sage, but it remains as true as ever—ever since I have been involved in high-level politics, I have never concealed the fact that we inherited the SIS as an institution that is exceedingly difficult to trust.
Under Vladimír Mečiar, the SIS carried out the dirtiest of work, including involvement in organised crime and even murder. And this continued with the fabrication of reports intended to influence politics and alter the balance of power—whether during the second Dzurinda government or in the administrations of Matovič, Heger, and Ódor.
Please, do not ask me why we failed to reform it, because the answer remains the same: in my deep conviction, the only viable course of action regarding Slovakia’s intelligence service is to dissolve it and establish a new one from scratch.
To speak of an attempted coup simply because of protests in the streets? That is absurd, utterly nonsensical. If the constitutional order, the state, or national security were genuinely under threat and I were convening the Security Council in response, then I would take action. Yet no measures were taken—none whatsoever.
Once again, one-third of SIS reports are complete nonsense. That has always been the case. Another third consists of little more than poor-quality summaries of the daily press. And as for the remainder? To be fair, 10 per cent did, at least, uncover certain cases of corruption, illicit activities, or genuine security threats.
But that is not an intelligence service. That is not a service tasked with guaranteeing internal and external security. Trusting it? That requires a great deal of imagination.
Source: Braňo Dobšinský | Aktuality.sk
