Slovakia’s prime minister has resigned and been replaced by a caretaker, deepening the country’s political crisis months before an election that looks likely to be won by a Moscow-friendly party opposed to further military aid to Ukraine.
The central bank deputy governor, Ľudovít Ódor, was due this week to become leader of a technocrat government after the prime minister, Eduard Heger, himself acting as a caretaker since losing his majority last September, stepped down on Sunday.
Under Heger’s centre-right government, elected in 2021, Slovakia – an EU and Nato member – has proved a strong backer of Kyiv since Russia’s invasion, sending weapons and, last month, its retired fleet of Soviet-made MiG fighters.
But polls suggest the opposition Smer-SD leftwing populist party led by the former prime minister Robert Fico, who has opposed military aid to Ukraine and blamed “Ukrainian fascists” for starting the war there in 2014, is on course to win the 30 September elections.
The Slovak president, Zuzana Čaputová, named Ódor, 46, as caretaker leader – the country’s third prime minister since 2020 elections – late on Sunday.
Credit: theguardian.com
