In Slovakia, where the presidential elections took place on Saturday, Peter Pellegrini, the candidate supported by the pro-Russian and populist government led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, was elected as the new president. Pellegrini obtained 53 percent of the votes, while the other candidate, the pro-European Ivan Korcok, former diplomat in the United States and former Foreign Minister, obtained 46 percent.
In Slovakia the president has a primarily ceremonial role, although with some government control functions. However, attention towards the presidential elections was very high due to their symbolic value: Pellegrini’s victory means, in fact, a further shift of the country towards increasingly hostile positions towards the European Union and close to Russia.
Pellegrini is an economist, he is 48 years old and was prime minister of Slovakia from 2018 to 2020. During the electoral campaign he spoke a lot, among other things, about the war in Ukraine, with arguments very close to Russian propaganda: he accused his opponent Korcok, in favor of sending weapons to support the Ukrainian defense, of being a “warmonger” and of wanting to send Slovak soldiers to fight in Ukraine (a power that the president of Slovakia would not have). Pellegrini will take office next June.
In the first round Korcok had won with a margin of around 5 percent, but in the run-off the competition was closer: it is probable that Pellegrini went to the votes obtained in the first round by Stefan Harabin (around 12 percent), candidate anti-establishment and pro-Russian much closer to his positions than to those of Korcok.
Korcok had also failed to gather much support among Slovak Hungarians, a minority concentrated mainly in the south of the country, equal to 7 percent of the population and on which Fidesz, the party of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has gained ever more influence, which on ties with Russia has positions closer to Pellegrini than to Korcok.