Fake Voices of Europe – The AI-attack on Slovak Journalist Monika Tódová

It is the eighth day of the war in Ukraine, February 28, 2022, a Sunday. Hundreds of volunteers are standing in Vyšné Nemecké at the foot of the Carpathians, the largest border crossing between Ukraine and Slovakia. 15,000 people have crossed the border here in the past few days. After hours and days of waiting, the refugees mostly cross on foot, carrying only wheeled suitcases, rucksacks and baby carriages. It is cold but sunny, helicopters are taking off and landing, the police and military have set up a checkpoint on the access road, the fire department, the church and aid organizations have set up stands.

Opposite, there is a stand offering accommodation. They have “loads” of places, says Alizbeta, a young woman in a brown corduroy vest sitting behind the counter. They only set up the stall here the day before. “It’s all homemade,” she says. Young Ukrainians waiting for their relatives translate. Old people from the area and hotel owners from other parts of the country have signed up. Volunteers are queuing up to drive the arrivals to their accommodation. “You have to do something,” says Alizbeta.

The Slovaks are stunned by what is happening on the other side of the border, and many here are channeling this feeling into practical help. The previous evening, Slovakian Defence Minister Jaroslav Naď had said that his country was ready to take in “unlimited” refugees from Ukraine. “This is war, and we are treating our Ukrainian brothers, with whom we have never had any problems, humanely and responsibly. If hundreds of thousands come, then we will take care of hundreds of thousands.”[1] President Zuzana Čaputová said on Saturday that „Ukraine is Europe. And it should be in the EuropeanUnion too. The time is now.“[2]

Slovakia was the spearhead of European solidarity with its neighbour Ukraine in this early phase of the war. But that is long gone. Left-wing populist Prime Minister Robert Fico has been in power since September 2023 and has turned the country around 180 degrees. Alongside Hungary, Slovakia, which he governs, is now the EU country that is blocking aid to Ukraine the most and has moved the furthest towards Russia politically.

Slovakia’s population is more polarized on the Ukraine issue than any other EU country. Pro-Russian and pro-European forces are engaged in fierce political battles over the future of the country. These political disputes are ominously intertwined with the ongoing fight against rampant corruption in the small Eastern European country, which has been and continues to be largely led by journalists. The most famous of these was Ján Kuciak, who was murdered in 2018. His assasination highlighted the problems in the country – and showed the dangers journalists are exposed to here. The networks that Jan Kuciak was investigating still exist – and they have used the fear of involvement in the Ukraine war to regain power in Slovakia. Kuciak’s mission is being continued today by other journalists.

One of them is Monika Tódová from the independent investigative medium Deník N. Like Kuciak, she has been researching corruption in the country for a long time and is therefore exposed to hostility and threats. The battle over the country’s course in Ukraine has made the situation even more difficult for journalists.

Tódová was the victim of the first known AI-generated audio deepfakes against journalists in the EU. With this new form of political disinformation, Tódová’s prominence was abused by pro-Russian actors to give Robert Fico an advantage in the election for prime minister in September 2023.

Developments in the country since the election have been dramatic: pro-European President Zuzana Čaputová was replaced in March 2024 by Fico’s election candidate Peter Pellegrini. Fico narrowly survived an assassination attempt in May 2024. Despite fierce national and international criticism, the government shortly after dissolved the public broadcaster in order to reconstitute it along Hungarian lines: as a tightly controlled government media. Fico’s nationalist culture minister, Martina Simkovicova, purged the country’s cultural institutions of people she considers to oppose her quest for a “culture that is Slovakian and nothing else”. And with a reform of the judiciary, Fico’s coalition deliberately made it more difficult to do what journalists such as Jan Kuciak and Monika Tódová have been advocating for years: The fight against corruption. The opposition speaks of a “pro mafia package”.

For this case study, TAZ and IPI spoke extensively with media professionals, academics, political observers, ex-government officials and activists in Slovakia. This reconstruction of the attacks on Monika Tódová shows the pressure the country has come under.

____________

[1]    https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Slowakei-erklaert-sich-offen-fuer-alle-Gefluechteten-article23160148.html

[2]    https://x.com/ZuzanaCaputova/status/1498261593427263492

On the morning of September 28, 2023, two days before the Slovakian national elections, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the otherwise rather secretive Russian foreign intelligence service SWR, speaks out. The US government has “recently intensified its interference in Slovakia”[1], says Naryshkin. The regular 48-hour-moratorium for Slovak media and politicians on reporting and commenting the election just started.

In view of good poll ratings for opponents of “unconditional” US support, President Joe Biden fears “another nationalist Viktor Orbán in Europe”. And so, the US State Department is trying to use “pressure, blackmail, intimidation and bribery” to ensure an election victory for the Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia, PS) party so that it forms a government that is “completely loyal” to Washington.

At 10.43 a.m., the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti[2] broadcasts the message. This is exactly the time when a 48-hour moratorium begins in Slovakia until the election. During this time, the media are not allowed to report on the election and politicians are not allowed to comment publicly.

Shortly beforehand, at 10.04 a.m. that morning, a short video clip[3] is created – as the so-called metadata will later show. It is 2:13 minutes long and shows two low-resolution photos: a picture of the famous Slovakian investigative journalist Monika Tódová and one of Michal Šimečka, the leading PS candidate. Tódová works for the investigative portal Deník and has been known for years for her reports on corruption surrounding Prime Minister Robert Fico. Šimečka is one of the country’s most popular pro-Western politicians.

In the clip, the photos remain still while the soundtrack plays. You can hear Šimečka supposedly describing how he bought votes in Roma villages – and how much money Tódová allegedly received to influence the election.

“It sounded like my voice,”[4] Monika Tódová later told taz. But what was said in it did not come from her – and not from Šimečka either. The conversation is a fake, digitally generated by an artificial intelligence, presumably trained with voice samples available online. It is the first audio deepfake of this kind from a top politician in Europe.

At 12:05 on the morning of September 28, former Slovakian constitutional judge and ex-Minister of Justice Štefan Harabin posts[5] the Tódová video on his Telegram messaging service channel. Harabin is one of Slovakia’s best-known pro-Kremlin politicians. He defended the annexation of Crimea and wrote on Facebook the day after the invasion of Ukraine that he would do “exactly the same as Putin”.

Harabin forwards the Tódová video from a now-deleted Telegram channel called “Gabika Ha” – possibly the account of his wife Gabika Harabinová. The video cannot be traced any further. In the hours that followed, it spread countless times on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and via mailing lists.

At 3.20 pm, Monika Tódová receives a link to the video from a Facebook user. The Deník editorial team reports it to the police. The matter goes to Daniel Milo, then head of the Centre for Combating Hybrid Threats at the Ministry of the Interior at the time. Milo urged social media platforms to delete or flag the video.

At 15:58, Deník posts that the video is a hoax. At 16:41, the police write that they have “intercepted” “manipulative videos and audio recordings” in connection with the election.[6] However, the video remains available on Telegram and Facebook until today. Facebook identifies it as fake.

Several deepfake audios, such as the one featuring Tódová, went viral on the country’s social media. The artificially created audio documents were intended to discredit pro-Western and pro-Ukrainian politicians. They were just one facet of the constant online disinformation that has undermined trust in the country’s media and institutions.

Ján Hargaš is responsible for the disinformation attacks at the PS party headquarters. At the time, he was State Secretary for Digitalization. In addition to the video with Tódová, there is another one. In it, PS party leader Šimečka allegedly claims to want to raise taxes on beer. “Of course, it’s driving people to the polls who want to prevent this,”[7] says Hargaš. He contacted Facebook, among others. AFP, the agency commissioned by the tech company Meta to carry out fact checks, immediately flagged the fake audio. But if the videos are blocked on one platform, they continue the next, says Hargaš. “The damage is done within a few hours; the reaction takes days.” How quickly the Tódová video spread, for example, was “no coincidence”. “It’s a network that constantly and orchestratedly produces fake news and uses it to spread disinformation.”

The following evening, the Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 1 aired[8] an interview[9] with Harabin on its main news program. In it, Harabin said that there were “many indications that the elections were falsified”. The Slovakian statistics office responsible for the elections has a contract with the IT security company ESET – and it is “officially working with the CIA”, Harabin claims. ESET has rejected[10] this accusation, which was already made by Moscow in 2018. “At least 85 percent” of the Slovakian population, Harabin continued, were against the ‘arms deliveries to the Bandera regime’ – meaning Ukraine. Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator and has been dead for 65 years.

Two days later, On September 30, 2023, Robert Fico’s Smer party wins the election with almost 23 percent, well ahead of the second-placed liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS) party with just under 18 percent.

On a Tuesday in January, Monika Tódová sits on the seventh floor of a high-rise building on the outskirts of Bratislava’s city center. The Deník editorial office is located here. The day before, the public prosecutor’s office rejected Tódová’s request to open an investigation into the video – “allegedly there is no recognizable criminal offence,” says Tódová. She still can’t believe that the faked conversation was distributed in this way. “It was so stupid that I just laughed,” she says.

In March 2024, the TAZ conducts an interview with Harabin’s spokesman Miroslav Jurana. Why did Harabin distribute the fake video of Tódová and where did he get it from? That was his “private decision”, says Jurana. He could not say any more. Harabin cancels an interview via Jurena that he had already agreed to the next day.

The events in Slovakia clearly show how Russia is prepared to proceed in its information war against the West – and how it can succeed in doing so.

Timeline:

Thursday, 28th September 2023

probably before 9.43 AM/11.43 AM Moscow time (timecode not included in page source code): Head of Russias foreign intelligence Sergei Naryschkins publishes a statement on insights on irregularities in slovak elections. A 48-hour-moratorium for slovak media and politicioans on reporting and commenting the election just started.

9.43 AM Bratislava time/ 11.43 AM Moscow time: Russian News Agency Ria Novosti reports Naryschkins statement

10.04 AM: video was created & edited, according to metadata saved by Telegram

12.05 PM: Štefan Harabin posts the video on his Telegram-Channel, „forwarded from Gabika Ha“, possibly the (deleted) account of his wife Gabika Harabinová

3.05 PM: Peter Marcek posts the video on his FB-account, no source indicated, got largest audience here, later flagged by FB/AFP as „hoax“, but not deleted

around 3.20 pm: Tódová gets a link to the video by a FB user, contacts Dennik editors, contacted the police

3.58 PM:  Dennik posts short statement that FB video is a hoax

4 PM:  video is spread on mailing lists and TikTok

4.41 PM:  National Slovak police post FB statement that they „intercepted several disinformational and manipulative videos and audio recordings in public spaces in connection with the elections to the National Council“

9.51 PM:  AFP publishes a larger analysis on the hoax (https://fakty.afp.com/doc.afp.com.33WY9LF)

10.47 PM: Dennik posts longer statement that FB video is a hoax, including statement from slovak ministry of interior (Daniel Milo)

Friday, 29th September 2023, evening: Russian State TV Rossiya 1 broadcasts interview with Štefan Harabin on audio-file.  Video not available in EU: https://smotrim.ru/video/2690374. Uncertain when interview was conducted.

Saturday, 30th September 2023: Election day. Robert Fico (SMER) wins with 22,9 per cent of votes.

Monday, 2nd October 2023: Slovak foreign ministry critizes Naryschkins statement on irregularities in vote

January 9th 2024: Prosecutor refuses investigation on the case

——–

Translated Transcript Fake Video

00:00:00
 Tódová: You know something new as well. About ticket processing. We have four polling stations in Bratislava. Prešov region is still being sorted out. How many votes does that give you?

00:00:09
  Šimečka: I can’t make a guess, because the turnout of those people is substantial. In isolated counties, they are very likely to vote for Fico and the fascists.

00:00:18
 Tódová: There are plenty of horrible people like that everywhere, and they don’t even have to be fascists. That’s why you have to be careful that you don’t miss even one significant voice. You think. You’ll see.

00:00:29
  Šimečka: There will be votes from the fools too. Last week, we interacted with people from the settlements and one vajda (Gipsy? Editors note) even said that his people already have practice. How does one make a train?

00:00:38
  Tódová: You seem to have prepared better than last time.

00:00:41  
Šimečka: Don’t be surprised, after all, it was a proper shambles. But all we had to do was appeal to the weak subsidies and now we have a better budget. Also votes from the settlements and people at the polls.

00:00:52
  Tódová: Again, somebody’s going to come in and pitch the tickets directly.

00:00:55
  Šimečka: That’s not a concern. It’s just that this is already settled.

00:00:57 
Tódová: Okay, well is it also true that I randomly win some greasy raffle or how did you come up with that?

00:01:05  
Šimečka: All the acknowledgements are actually provided by this (personal name deleted, Editors note). And the amounts and the form of how to get it to you without someone being able to pin it on you as taking a bribe will be decided by how many seats in parliament he ends up occupying.

00:01:19
  Tódová: You’re feeling a little bit because there’s a lot of people around. Somebody registers (???), so they’ll be right on the lookout and listen to what we’re filming about.

00:01:28
  Šimečka: Oh come on, Monica’s going to be paranoid. I understand that there’s a lot going on with you, too, but we could talk about child pornography here and nobody would notice.

00:01:39  
Tódová: Don’t go off topic, I just want reassurance that this isn’t going to turn into a mega (???). You understand?

00:01:47
 Šimečka: What are you afraid of? You know yourself that no matter what you do, you’ll get probation at most, and in your case, the only real risk is losing your confidence and your job.

00:01:57
 Tódová: So I’m not exactly worried about the job.

00:02:01 
Šimečka: Well, see, so we’re unnecessarily addressing this here, and mainly. Unless he’s completely stupid. Hey wait a second, somebody’s calling me again.

——–

Transcript Russian State TV:  “Slovakia could refuse to arm Kiev after the elections”

Moderator: Provide weapons to Ukraine: no. Crimea will remain Russian and Ukraine will not go beyond the current military line of contact. These are all statements by Slovakian politician Robert Fico, the country’s former prime minister, whose party will be the favourite in the parliamentary elections on 30 September, according to polls. The West is already sounding the alarm that Moscow will soon have a powerful new ally in NATO. Now Slovakia, which was the first to supply Kiev with air defence technology and take in more than 10,000 Ukrainian refugees, is about to turn its attention to the east. A report by our correspondent Daria Grigorova.

Daria Grigorova: The Slovakian parliamentary elections have unexpectedly moved to the centre of international politics. The programme of one of the favourites is to blame. The Smer party is against blindly following the policies of the EU and NATO.

Other presenter: The direction that the Slovak Social Democratic Party is proposing for Slovakia is worrying Western countries. The leader of this political force, Robert Fitzo, has more than once openly promised not to give a single bullet to Ukraine and to completely stop all support for Kiev if he wins the elections.

Daria Grigorova: You are a critic of the military support for Ukraine. Do you believe that Slovakia cannot rely on the defence of its NATO allies?

Fico: The West is very concerned about the amount of weapons and money that have been sent to Ukraine. However, there has been no progress in their counter-offensive. We will continue to argue that it is better to stop the fighting as soon as possible and start negotiations. There is no military solution. After all, we are the party of peace and not the party of war.

Moderator: Slovakia is one of Kiev’s most generous supporters today. For example, it was the first NATO country to send fighter jets to the Ukrainians. It also decommissioned a functional S-300 air defence system for the Ukrainian army. Smer promises to veto Ukraine’s membership of NATO and to campaign at European Union level for the lifting of a number of anti-Russian sanctions, particularly in the energy sector, as they are damaging to countries such as Slovakia. A separate item on the programme is the fight for traditional values and the abolition of quotas for the admission of refugees. Most polls currently give this course a lead and it has already triggered a reaction in the EU because it allows itself to openly criticise Brussels’ course. Western media are trying, Western media are trying to mould him into the image of a pro-Russian leader. The Guardian newspaper compares him to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and expresses concern about the upcoming elections in Brussels.

Guardian article: Most analysts predict a narrow victory for Fico’s pro-Russian party, raising the possibility of a dramatic shift in Slovakia’s foreign policy. The threat to EU support for Ukraine and the rise of populist politicians across the continent. However unpredictable the upcoming elections may be, Fico’s shadow looms largest. And there is some confusion in Brussels.

Harabin: “The Western media is spreading an atmosphere of fear in Slovakia,” says Harabin. He does not rule out the possibility that the elections are rigged. “According to the information I have, at least 85% of the Slovakian population is against Ukraine receiving weapons and against supporting Ukraine receiving weapons and against supporting the Bandera regime. People know what the supporters of Bandera did in the 50s and 52/53s, when they fled to the west across the north of Slovakia and murdered people. There are many indications that the elections are rigged. So that the elections can be manipulated, because the votes of the statistics office, which has a contract with the IT company ESR, officially co-operates with the CIA.

Moderator: Smer’s main rival is the Progressive Slovakia party led by Michal Šimečka. The current President of Slovakia, Zuzana Čaputová, was a member of this party in the past. In addition to the fight against corruption and education reform, the main points of the programme also include Ukraine’s membership of the EU and arms deliveries.

Michal Šimečka: The elections at the end of September could lead us to a return to the past, as Mr Fico suggests. This would possibly mean a shift in our foreign policy towards the east. We are planning to become a democratic Slovakia as an active member of the European Union and NATO.

Daria Grigorova: Sociologists predict that Fico’s party will win between 18 and 25 per cent of the vote. Its fiercest competitor, Progressive Slovakia, is hoping for 15 to 20 per cent. The final distribution of seats will largely depend on whether the small parties overcome the 5 per cent hurdle. Today is a day of silence in Slovakia.

_________________

[1]    https://archive.ph/g6U4R

[2]    https://archive.ph/g6U4R

[3]    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As_UZvBLXGk

[4]    All Tódová quotes: personal interview

[5]    https://t.me/harabin/10147

[6]    https://www.tasr.sk/tasr-clanok/TASR:2023092800000429

[7]    All Hargas quotes: personal interview

[8]    https://dennikn.sk/3628871/na-slovenske-volby-poslali-rusi-skusenu-propagandistku-ktorej-posluzil-harabin-teoriou-o-esete/?ref=list

[9]    https://smotrim.ru/video/2690374

[10]  https://spectator.sme.sk/c/20759483/eset-rejects-allegations-raised-by-russia-of-cooperation-with-the-cia.html

AI-Fakes

The potential scale of the problem was demonstrated on Good Friday 2024, when US software company OpenAI, the global market leader in artificial intelligence presented the new voice engine[1]:  The program can duplicate a person’s voice based on a mere 15-second audio snippet.

OpenAI was transparent about the uncertainties: “We recognize that generating speech that resembles people’s voices has serious risks, which are especially top of mind in an election year,“ the company stated. “We are engaging with U.S. and international partners from across government, media, entertainment, education, civil society and beyond to ensure we are incorporating their feedback as we build.“[2] For the time being, the program will therefore only clone voices of people who have “expressly agreed to this in advance”, the company assured. In addition, listeners must be made aware that the voice is AI-generated.

But the genie is out of the bottle. Other companies have developed comparable software – and have fewer scruples than OpenAI claims. Fake news is now so widespread that researchers are talking about a global “information crisis”[3] and classifying disinformation as one of the biggest risks to democracies.

The World Economic Forum counts Misinformation and AI 2024 as two of the “3 biggest emerging risks the world is facing”[4]. Over the next two years, misinformation and disinformation would present one of the biggest ever challenges to the democratic process, the WEO states. The risk presented by misinformation and disinformation is magnified by the widespread adoption of generative AI to produce what is known as “synthetic content”. This ranges from deepfake videos, voice cloning and the production of counterfeit websites. Regulators are acting to create new laws to control the misuse of AI but the speed the technology is advancing is likely to outpace the regulatory process.

Decades of Corruption, loss of trust – and Fico’s comeback

Slovakia joining the European Union in 2004 sparked hope for “… an irrevocable shift away from the bad habits of the past”[5], as the Economist wrote in 2009. Instead, it was a “shiftbackwards into the very habits of cronyism, clientelism and favoritism“[6], as corruption expert Andreas Pawelke wrote. It was to be witnessed under the then new government in power. Its leader: Robert Fico, who won the national elections in 2006 and led a coalition of his leftist-populist party Smer, the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) and the right-wing party Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). Already then, journalists have been denounced by Fico as “sleazy snakes“, „prostitutes” or “hyenas”[7] (The Slovak Spectator 2010) and former Minister of Justice and current President of the Supreme Court Štefan Harabin called the special anti-corruption court a “fascist institution”[8]. “While the list of corruption scandals involving ministers and government officials is long, the government’s passivity with regards to anti-corruption efforts is striking“, stated Pawelke.  After Prime Minister Fico took office in 2006, a “significant decline was noted in the government’s anticorruption activities.“ Ficos administration refused to adopt an anticorruption program or to create administrative structures to combat corruption. “The incumbent administration has practically abandoned any systematic approach to combating corruption”[9], the researchers Mesežnikov, Kollár and Vašečka wrote.

Slovak journalist Jan Kuciak, born in 1990, grew up under this government. 2015, he became editor of the news portal aktuality.sk, part of Ringier Axel Springer Slovakia. Kuciak specialized in researching cases of corruption and tax offences in Slovakia and reported on these cases on the aktuality.sk portal. His research focused primarily on prominent entrepreneurs, who had business connections to the Smer party in power at the time – and to organized crime. Kuciak was involved in the analysis of the Panama Papers, which deal with tax havens.

According to Kuciak’s research, head of government Robert Fico’s personal assistant Mária Trošková was a former business partner and partner of Antonino Vadalà.[10] Vadalà was identified in Kuciak’s research as the most important mastermind of the Italian mafia network in Slovakia.[11]

In the fall of 2017, Kuciak received threats and filed a complaint with the police. One of the entrepreneurs, Marián Kočner, whose business Kuciak had recently researched, publicly threatened him because of these reports: He wanted to collect similar “dirty reports”[12] about Kuciak and his family as the journalist had done.

On February 21, 2018, Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová were shot dead in his house in Veľká Mača near Trnava in western Slovakia. He and his fiancée had bullet wounds to the chest and head. Kuciak’s fiancée had last contacted her family four days before the bodies were found. As her mother was unable to reach her for days, she alerted the police.

Fico had by that time already been in power for 12 years. The mafia-like corruption in the state had become obvious – mainly due to research by Ján Kuciak and Deník. But Kuciak did not do the research alone. Monika Tódová is one of the other journalists who dedicated herself to the fight against the rampant corruption in the country. And she became a target of the same perpetrators as well.

Monika Tódová’s emails were hacked back in 2016 and published by property entrepreneur Marián Kočner – the one who threatened Kuciak before he was killed. Kočner is today considered a symbolic figure for the intertwining of organised crime and politics. He is serving a 19-year prison sentence and is suspected of having ordered several murders, including that of the journalist Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová.

“We wrote many articles about the system they created,“ Tódová said. Hundreds of people were convicted by the courts after the Kuciak murder. “Almost all of them from the state authorities. Something really big happened here after the murder, because this investigation uncovered many other crimes committed by officials and politicians.“ Among others, the head of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the head of the tax authority were sent to prison.

In 2018, Fico was forced to resign following the murder of Kuciak and his fiancée. His Smer party lost the 2020 national elections. Many hoped for a fresh political start. However, the then ruling alliance led by publisher Igor Matovič was unsuccessful. Matovič is now seen by many as a dilettante – and Fico returned.

The Ukraine-War and Russian Influence

For Tódová and many others in Slovakia, the mafia-like structures in the Fico environment and Russian influence can only be understood together: The politicians want power so that they can continue to do corrupt business or not be prosecuted for it. And Russia wants them in power to divide the West. So, they entered into a symbiosis. ‘The two cannot be separated,” says Tódová. The consequences are serious.

In the 2023 election campaign, Fico campaigned for Ukraine with the slogan “Not a single bullet“. Fico declared that under his leadership, Slovakia would not supply Ukraine with “a single shot of ammunition“.[13] At the same time, he called for better relations with Russia. Following his election victory, Fico said that Slovakia had “bigger problems”[14] than aid to Ukraine and spoke out in favour of peace talks.

The previous government had promised to take in “unlimited“ refugees from Ukraine, giving the invaded neighbour anti-aircraft missiles, fighter jets and self-propelled howitzers, so many that Slovakia has since been dependent on protection from NATO partners. Fico’s camp castigates this as “high treason“[15] and threatens constitutional complaints. After his election victory, Fico stops the military aid. He claims that Ukraine is “completely under the influence and control of the USA“ and is therefore “not an independent and sovereign country“.[16]

Fico won the election in September 2023. Two weeks later, he entered a three-party alliance with an ultra-right and Hlas party. He radically changes his country’s course towards Ukraine.

This was also possible because false news slingers on the internet are gaining more and more reach, while serious media and democratic institutions are struggling. According to a Reuters[17] survey, only 25 per cent of Slovakians still trust the established media, the lowest figure of the 46 countries surveyed. According to a survey conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2023, only 18 per cent[18] still trust state institutions. The population of Slovakia has the highest tendency in Eastern Europe to believe fake news. This loss of trust is one of the reasons why the pro-Russian Robert Fico was elected to his fourth term as prime minister last September.

The loss of trust was investigated by Daniel Milo, who was responsible for the fight against fake news at the Slovakian Ministry of the Interior until 2023. From the beginning of 2023, the centre searched social media for “narratives designed to undermine the legitimacy of the elections,“[19] says Milo. ‘That was the pattern that was repeated all over the world“.

Among other things, Milo came across claims that Slovakia would impose martial law and cancel elections because of Ukraine. “All sorts of strange stories were told to sow doubt and undermine the credibility of the electoral process,“ says Milo. “There were even attempts to create a parallel vote-counting system, there was a website and parties calling for people to go to local election committees and count themselves.“ Trump sends his regards.

After the election in September 2023, Fico kicked Milo out. Since then, he has been analysing the mood in the country at the think tank Globsec. Unlike the Czech Republic, with its historically Western-oriented intellectuals, Slovakia’s elite was more orientated towards Moscow. This still has an effect. The Soviet era still has a positive connotation here, and pro-Russian attitudes are widespread. Less than 40 per cent of Slovaks blame Russia for the war in Ukraine. “Most of them fell for disinformation narratives“, according to an analysis by Globsec.
Slovakia was therefore an ideal candidate to break up the front of Ukraine supporters within the EU.

Ján Hargaš was State Secretary for Digitalisation in the previous government and is now a member of parliament for the Progressive Party. We cannot “turn a blind eye to the fact that Russia is influencing the democratic process, including through hybrid operations“, he says. The most effective way to do this is to undermine trust and create chaos. Hargaš fears that this will continue. If the aim of the disinformation is to stop the fight against corruption and aid to Ukraine, “then that would be achieved because the new government is doing exactly that“, says Hargaš.
Russia also has considerable influence on politicians in other countries. Representatives of the far-right and pro-Russian AfD party in particular are repeatedly suspected of accepting financial support from Kremlin circles. Dennik, Monika Tódová’s medium, uncovered a particularly explosive case in March: Bavarian AfD member of the Bundestag Petr Bystron is said to have received money from pro-Russian sources. This is revealed by information from the Czech secret service BIS. It concerns allegedly paid appearances on the television channel Voice of Europe, which is considered a Russian propaganda organ by security authorities in the EU. At the request of the AfD party leadership, Bystron declared that he had ‘at no time’ received payments or cryptocurrencies from an employee of Voice of Europe ‘or any Russian’.

Harabin’s Attempt to become President

To completey “stop the fight against corruption and aid to Ukraine“, Fico needs the Support for the president, who was re-elected in March 2024. The pro-Western President Zuzana Čaputová (PS) announced in June 2023 that she would not run again. The death threats and slander from the pro-Russian and far-right camp had become too fierce for the popular politician.

In addition to the clearly pro-Western Ivan Korčok and Peter Pellegrini, who is close to Fico, Štefan Harabin – the former judge who first posted Tódová’s fake video online and still does not say where he got it from – also stood in the presidential election.

On the evening of the first round of voting, 22 March, Štefan Harabin invites us to a Syrian restaurant in the west of Bratislava’s city centre. Wood-panelled walls, low ceilings, goulash, brawn and falafel on the buffet, around 100 people have come, the women in evening dresses, the men in suits, the hard core of Slovakian friends of Russia. Many have helped Harabin on a voluntary basis, people are streaming on mobile phones, social media is important here.
“I hope we get some good news,“ says one lady, who walks around filming and asking for messages for her followers. Everyone here hopes that the widespread fear of war in the country will give him a better result this time. Andrej Danko, the candidate of the far-right SNS party, gave up his candidacy shortly before the election in favour of Harabin. Moscow’s friends and the extreme right are also close in Slovakia.

An older man fiddles with his tripod. He accompanied Harabin’s election campaign as a cameraman, he says. For social media, free of charge. “I’m a patriot,” he says. “And if you’re patriotic, you want peace for your country. I don’t want someone to put a gun in my hand and say, run and shoot!“ Harabin would prevent that. His challenger Ivan Korčok, on the other hand, “wants war, he wants young Slovaks to go to war to kill Russians or be killed himself’.

The polling stations are open until 10 pm, Harabin arrives at the election party an hour early. He makes the rounds, greeting almost everyone by kissing their cheeks and clasping their hands. He walks as slowly as he talks. Peace is the big issue with which Harabin wants to score points. He recently said that he doesn’t even want to send ‘humanitarian aid’ to Ukraine.

For a few days now, the Kremlin has no longer been talking about a “special military operation in Ukraine“, but about “war“. Harabin’s campaign manager Miroslav Jurena, however, is sticking to the old language. The “special military operation in Ukraine“, he tells taz newspaper, “certainly cannot be seen in black and white“. You have to look at “how this conflict could have come about in the first place.“ However, it is now the case that eastern Ukraine has been “virtually accepted by the Duma as new provinces of the Russian Federation“. It will be “very difficult for Russia to return the two republics,“ says Jurena. But the sooner they sit down at the negotiating table, “the better, certainly also for Ukraine“.

Harabin receives 11.7 per cent of the vote, less than in 2019. Peter Pellegrini, who is moderately pro-Kremlin compared to Harabin, receives 37 per cent, but wins in the second round of voting. This puts a confidant of Fico at the head of state – and he can rule through. 

Antidemocratic tendencies in Slovakia

Since then, Fico has been reorganising the state to suit his interests: The fight against corruption is being made more difficult, the media is being subjected to state control and aid to Ukraine is being cancelled.

Among other things, Fico’s government has dissolved the special anti-corruption prosecutor’s office and raised the criminal offence thresholds for white-collar crime – from which an accused former Smer finance minister, among others, is likely to benefit. Jan Hargaš calls this a “pro-mafia package”. And it is a pro-disinformation package, too.

Fico had not yet recovered from the shots fired at him on 15 May when the parliament in Bratislava decided to dissolve the public broadcaster RTVS with the votes of the coalition led by Fico’s SMER party. The vote on 20 June was preceded by months of protests by opposition parties and RTVS employees. In the end, all 78 MPs from the governing parties voted in favour of the controversial law. The opposition MPs, however, left the chamber in protest and boycotted the vote. They announced a complaint to the Constitutional Court against the law and accused the government of wanting to create a propaganda medium for itself.

Simkovicova and the populist Prime Minister Robert Fico had repeatedly criticised RTVS reporting as being biased against them. However, they were unable to remove the Director General Lubos Machaj and his team, who had been elected by a previous parliamentary majority until 2027, due to the existing legal situation. The formal dissolution of RTVS removed this obstacle.

Slovakia’s previous public broadcaster RTVS formally ceased to exist on 1 July and the new broadcaster STVR began operations. The public, however, did not notice much of this. As before, all news programmes were broadcast with the RTVS logo in the picture, and the RTVS website also continued to operate at the usual address. Bit STVR is now under the direct control of the Ministry of Culture, and therefore of Simkovicova.

The new head of STVR to be chosen by a council to be appointed by the government and parliament. Věra Jourová, EU Vice-President for Values and Transparency, said that she had already discussed the contested law on the reorganisation of public broadcasting with Prime Minister Robert Fico in April.[20] However, the final version is not yet available, which is why the EU Commission does not yet have any means of action. In the event of violations, Brussels could initiate infringement proceedings. The organisation Reporters Without Borders had warned[21] of a siginficant threat to press freedom.

Shortly afterwards, beginning of august, leading heads of cultural institutions were dismissed by Simkovicova. The opposition then spoke of “purges“ aimed at suppressing artistic freedom. Theformer director of the National Theatre, Matej Drlicka, said after his dismissal that Simkovicova wanted to “create an era of fear“ and “reintroduce the communist era of the 1970s“[22]. Simkovicova’s ministry declared that it had lost confidence in Drlicka due to his “political activism“. The director of the National Gallery, Alexandra Kusa, had publicly criticised the dismissal. She herself was dismissed by the minister a day later. An online petition[23] calling for Simkovicova’s resignation reached 184,000 signatures until end of August.

Tens of thousands of people had repeatedly responded to the opposition’s calls for protest in the first few months of the year. However, following the opposition’s defeat in the presidential election at the beginning of April and an assassination attempt on Fico on 15 May, the protest movement faded.

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[1]    https://openai.com/index/navigating-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-synthetic-voices/

[2]    https://openai.com/index/navigating-the-challenges-and-opportunities-of-synthetic-voices/

[3]    https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/T3-Report-Tackling-the-Information-Crisis.pdf

[4]    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/ai-disinformation-global-risks/

[5]    https://www.economist.com/europe/2009/11/19/heading-south

[6]    https://www.againstcorruption.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WP-13-Diagnosis-of-Corruption-in-Slovakia-new.pdf

[7]    https://www.againstcorruption.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WP-13-Diagnosis-of-Corruption-in-Slovakia-new.pdf

[8]    https://www.economist.com/europe/2009/11/19/heading-south

[9]    Kollár, M, Mesežnikov, G. and Vašečka, M., 2009 Slovakia: Nations in Transit Ratings and Averaged Scores.

The data above was provided by The World Bank, World Bank Indicators 2009; Freedom House

[10]  https://www.blick.ch/ausland/er-hat-beziehungen-bis-ins-slowakische-regierungsbuero-mafia-mann-vadala-und-16-weitere-personen-gefasst-id8108607.html

[11]  https://www.blick.ch/ausland/der-ermordete-ringier-journalist-jan-kuciak-27-zeigte-in-seiner-letzten-recherche-wie-die-mafia-den-slowakischen-staat-unterwanderte-was-wusste-ministerpraesident-robert-fico-id8050648.html

[12]  https://meedia.de/2018/02/26/springer-und-ringier-entsetzt-und-fassungslos-ueber-mord-an-enthuellungsjournalist-kuciak-und-seiner-verlobten

[13]  https://cepa.org/article/slovakias-no-bullets-for-ukraine-pledge-conditions-apply/

[14]  https://www.barrons.com/news/slovaks-have-bigger-problems-than-ukraine-ties-fico-4b357c0e

[15]  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-21/slovakia-accuses-past-cabinet-of-treason-over-army-aid-for-kyiv

[16]  https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/slovak-pm-says-ukraine-is-not-a-sovereign-country/

[17]  https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/slovakia

[18]  https://www.csis.org/programs/europe-russia-and-eurasia-program/projects/european-election-watch/2023-elections/slovakia

[19]  all Milo quotes: personal interview

[20]  https://enrsi.rtvs.sk/articles/topical-issue/361284/european-commission-vice-president-holds-meetings-in-bratislava

[21]  https://rsf.org/en/slovakia-rsf-and-its-partners-urge-parliament-reject-bill-would-politicise-public-broadcaster

[22]  https://www.barrons.com/news/slovaks-protest-purges-at-top-cultural-posts-38c33380

[23]  https://www.peticie.com/na_obranu_kultury

“Corruption”: Even in the early years of his time in office, Fico defamed journalists as ‘sleazy snakes’, “prostitutes“ or “hyenas”[1]. He maintained this tone – even against Monika Tódová The fact that she herself was chosen as a victim does not surprise her, however. In 2016, she published a major story about tax fraud worth millions from Fico’s personal circle. Since then, she has been repeatedly attacked. ‘They claimed on social media that I had a very large flat that I couldn’t afford on my salary,’ says Tódová. ‘When Fico talked about journalists, he always mentioned my name: ‘Tódová and people like her’, or the ‘richest journalist in Slovakia’.’ She continued to write about corruption – and received ‘threats by email every other day’. This is the strategy of the defence: When journalists report on real corruption, they are accused of being for sale themselves, even if there is no evidence or indication of this. This is also made possible by communication via social networks and the loss of trust in established media, which can be built upon with such accusations. It is therefore hardly a coincidence that Tódová was used for the audio deepfake and was associated with corrupt practices.

“Peace”: The accusation of warmongering was not levelled against Todova personally, but against pro-European forces and media that are in favour of supporting Ukraine, such as Todova’s medium Denik or the PS party. Prorussion actors are accusing[2] Ukraine supporters of dragging Slovakia into a war with Russia, jeopardising the country’s security, encouraging an escalation, causing more deaths and standing in the way of ‘peace’. Fico’s complaint[3] in August about the ‘pressure of opinion’ in Western democracies goes in this direction. Anyone who deviates from this unified opinion on important foreign policy issues is ‘indiscriminately pressurised and threatened with isolation’ by Western democracies, according to a statement published by Fico to mark the anniversary of the Moscow invasion in 1968. In it, Fico compares the violent suppression of the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968 by Warsaw Pact troops with what he sees as the pressure of opinion in Europe today. ‘21 August 1968 reminds us of where a policy of the only correct political opinion (…) leads.’ Moscow’s decision at the time ‘to use military force to suppress any opinion other than the prescribed unity opinion deprived the Czechs and Slovaks of the choice of a freer path“

Narratives after the assassination attempt: After the attempted assassination of Robert Fico, prorussian actors “pragmatically presented themselves as victims of a hate lynch mob of the media and the opposition“[4], as a study of Friedrich Nauman Foundation (FNS) states. Smer-politician Ľuboš Blaha claimed that he and his colleagues “were the targets of persecution and attempts of extermination precisely because of their different views on the war in Ukraine.“ Posts accusing the opposition or the Progressive Slovakia party of involvement in the attempt on Fico’s life continued to circulate, as the FNS observed. The attacker himself was supposed to be a “fanatical supporter of the opposition forces“, according to disinformation peddlers. The narrative was also voiced by the prime minister himself, who in a popular video spoke of the assassination attempt as the result of the political hatred of a failing and frustrated opposition.

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[1]    https://www.againstcorruption.eu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WP-13-Diagnosis-of-Corruption-in-Slovakia-new.pdf

[2]    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68754112

[3]    https://www.teraz.sk/slovensko/fico-1968-pripomina-kam-moze-viest/817229-clanok.html?utm_source=teraz&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=click&utm_content=.%253Bsearch

[4]    https://www.freiheit.org/central-europe-and-baltic-states/slovakias-eu-election-campaign-culminated-exploitation-attempt