The authorities did not identify the suspect in the shooting of Prime Minister Robert Fico but described him as a “lone wolf.” Politicians called for calm as Mr. Fico’s condition appeared to stabilize.
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Police officers outside the hospital in Slovakia where Prime Minister Robert Fico was on Thursday.
A suspect in the shooting of Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, has been charged, the country’s interior minister said on Thursday, describing him as a “lone wolf” who was radicalized after last month’s presidential election.
Mr. Fico’s condition had stabilized after what his government called a politically motivated assassination attempt, but he was “not out of a life-threatening situation,” the deputy prime minister told a news conference. He said Mr. Fico had only a “limited” ability to communicate and faced a “difficult” recovery.
The authorities have not named the suspect, who Slovakian news media outlets described as a 71-year-old amateur poet. But the shooting on Wednesday immediately raised political tempers in the Central European nation, which was already sharply divided between supporters of Mr. Fico (pronounced FEET-soh), who back his right-wing nationalist and anti-immigration policies, and opponents who accuse him of destroying democracy.
As the prime minister’s allies accused opponents of having “blood on their hands,” officials were urging political parties and the public to reject escalatory rhetoric and hatred. Echoing other politicians, the president-elect, Peter Pellegrini — an ally of Mr. Fico’s who was elected last month — said that “Slovakia must walk on the path of peace, not reply to hatred with hatred.”
Mr. Pellegrini called on all Slovak political parties to temporarily pause their campaigns for next month’s European Parliament elections.
Here’s what else to know:
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Mr. Fico, a combative, shape-shifting veteran politician widely loathed by Bratislava liberals but popular outside the capital, was shot multiple times on Wednesday, taking at least one bullet in his abdomen. The shooting occurred after meetings with local officials and supporters in Handlova, a town in central Slovakia that voted heavily for his party in a September parliamentary election.
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Slovakia’s political temperature has risen to fever pitch in recent months as Mr. Fico’s government, in power since a tight September election, has pushed for an overhaul of the country’s state broadcasting system to purge what it sees as liberal bias. Critics have accused Mr. Fico of trying to take Slovakia back to the repression of the country’s communist past before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Amid criticism of how Mr. Fico’s security detail responded to the assassination attempt, the police said they had opened an inquiry into the response of security officials at the scene.
