NEWSLETTER

Even the disinformers are consolidating at the end of the year. The opposition and the EU are slandered, while odes to Russia are underscored by Fico's planned visit to Moscow

Infosecurity.sk presents an overview of disinformation trends that have been on the rise in the last two weeks:

• A large number of posts contained negative sentiment towards the EU. In particular, information about the investigation of former Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders for money laundering was used to spread disinformation. These were interpreted by many to overlap with his alleged contacts with the Slovak opposition party Progressive Slovakia, which is supposed to be as corrupt and immoral as Reynders.
• Domestic topics were again dominated by attacks on the mainstream media and denigration of the opposition. The latter were to criticise the coalition unjustifiably for the way in which public finances were consolidated, the coalition crisis and the state of the police. According to Prime Minister Fico, this was "propaganda by Šimečka and co." supported by his father, the daily SME, Denník N and Aktuality.sk. The reasons for the dismissal of the Minister of the Interior Šutaj Estok are, in his opinion, "absolutely fabricated".
• At the end of the year, there was no shortage of narratives glorifying Russia. The prime minister's planned visit to Moscow revived Soviet propaganda narratives, while the post-election situation in Georgia and Romania motivated Ľuboš Blaha and Eduard Chmelár to spread conspiracy theories about the evil West and the Maidan.

The double moral standard of European liberals

In recent weeks, disinformation actors have exploited topics related to the European Union, primarily in the context of the money laundering investigation of the former Justice Commissioner, but also the appointment of a new European Commission (EC) or new climate policies.

In particular, information about the investigation of former Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders for alleged money laundering through the national lottery has provided a platform for criticism of the EU. Reynders, a Belgian and a member of the Renew Europe political group in the EP, was in office from December 2019 to 30 November 2024. He represented the EC in disputes with the Slovak government concerning amendments to the criminal law. He has also criticised the lack of protection for Slovak journalists in relation to the latest changes at RTVS, the national television and radio broadcaster. It is precisely because of his attitude towards the actions of the Slovak Government that he has become a grateful target for criticism, but also for manipulation. Also, his membership in the Renew Europe was a target of manipulations in the past, as it is the same political group that Progressive Slovakia party is a member of.

Information about possible money laundering has been exploited by a number of Slovak politicians and disinformation actors. Robert Fico, the Prime Minister, manipulatively linked the situation to Reynders' tenure as EU Commissioner in 2020-2023, when the EC supposedly ignored the violation of the rule of law in Slovakia in connection with alleged efforts to criminalize or eliminate the opposition. We address this post below.

In a Facebook post, Environment Minister Tomáš Taraba spoke of the "two-faced life of European progressives". Similarly to Fico, Taraba pointed to human rights violations during the 2020-2023 period. Reynders, he said, was hypocritical when lecturing Slovakia on the rule of law, but "when the current opposition was violating human rights in Slovakia, as a commissioner and a great friend of Progressive Slovakia, he was silent and did not see any violations anywhere". Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok also fuelled the rhetoric about Reyndres as an alleged ally of the mainstream media and the current opposition against the government. He said the opposition was showing a double moral standard by not commenting on the allegations against his person.

Ľuboš Blaha, an MEP for SMER - SSD, also brought his own conclusions in a post on Telegram. He tried to use the topic to slander the opposition, primarily the Progressive Slovakia party. In a post, which was also shared on the official Facebook page of SMER - SSD, he claimed that Reyndres "cooperated with Progressive Slovakia for many years". As proof of the alleged cooperation, he used a photograph of the Commissioner with PS member and MEP Martin Hojsík, which, however, proves nothing. Blaha did not hesitate to fabricate and to make accusations about the corruption of Hojsík and the PS: "They were all in the Progressivist International, both the Belgian Reynders and the Soros’ follower Šimečka. And today it was beautifully shown what the Progressives are. Criminals. Corrupt to the core. (...) We in Smer stand firmly against this corrupt liberal establishment, represented by Reynders and Hojsík."

MEP Milan Mazurek, a leader of the far right party Republika, was also critical of the EU, once again opposing military aid to Ukraine. He argued that the EU is made up of war fanatics and that the only result of their policy is "a ruined and destroyed Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of dead people and hopeless despair on the front line". In his speech in the EP, Mazurek favoured Russia, speaking out against the imposition of economic sanctions and the arms aid being sent to Ukraine. He also resuscitated conspiratorial rhetoric about the alleged self-enrichment of Western arms companies and Ukrainian political elites, and repeated phrases about the need for peace negotiations.

In addition, Mazurek held the EU responsible for the war in Ukraine, as the pre-2014 Association Agreement has allegedly driven Ukraine into civil war and brought it to the state it is in today. His speech also included the threat of a third world - nuclear - war, which, in his view, would be provoked by Ukraine's military support.

The mosaic of manipulative anti-EU posts was completed by criticising climate action and proposals to combat the climate crisis. This line has traditionally been drawn by MEPs for the Republic. Milan Mazurek's post, which we discuss below, was misleading about climate aid to the developing world countries, which allegedly makes EU citizens suffer high prices.

In addition, the MEP also touched upon the automotive issues. Mazurek presented the proposal for a measure under which cars in Member States should drive in cities at a reduced speed from 50 to 30 km/h as the idea of green fanatics who have "lost their minds". In a video post, he linked the measure to a conspiratorial claim that the EU is trying to restrict citizens' freedom: "It is widely known that green politicians hate cars and drivers (...). They come up with one restriction after another and want to deprive people of the last vestiges of freedom..." In fact, such a proposal was presented as early as 2023, and it is supposed to be a measure to increase pedestrian safety and reduce accidents. The measure, if adopted, would probably only apply to certain urban areas where cars mix with cyclists and pedestrians. Such a principle already applies in Slovakia, for example in the centre of Košice.

Mazurek also focused on the issue of genetically modified food, in response to the EC's proposal to import and use a new kind of maize that is more resistant to herbicides. Since the European Parliament blocked the decision, the import of these foods will not happen in practice. However, Mazurek  deliberately dramatised the situation in his video, portraying the EC proposal as "attempts to poison our own population".

As indicated by the lines above, the last two weeks have seen a relatively diverse range of disinformation actors focusing on topics related to events on the European Union's ground. That is why we have also looked at them through the analytical tool Gerulata Juno. We used it to analyse the most popular posts on Slovak Facebook featuring the keywords "EU", "Brussels" or "european parliament" and "commission". We excluded from the list those posts that did not contain problematic narratives. We then evaluated the posts based on the total number of interactions (the sum of all reactions, comments, and shares).

The post with the most interactions belongs to MEP Milan Uhrík (Republika), who published a misleading video from the streets of Brussels. The footage shows bags of mixed waste regularly dumped outside homes by locals to be collected and taken away in the morning. However, Uhrík misleads in the video about the residents throwing the garbage on the street "and once a week maybe some garbage men come and pick it up". He manipulatively links the way in which waste is collected, which is the responsibility of the City of Brussels, with the actions of EU institutions. He suggests that such people should not seek to control order and the rule of law in member countries: "So, these people who can't even clean up their own street will lecture us on what is and is not right to do and how we should behave".

The second post was published by Prime Minister Robert Fico. It is a recording of a press conference at the Government Office, during which Fico reacted to the ongoing coalition crisis and the consolidation of public finances. In his statement, the Prime Minister blamed the previous governments of Igor Matovič, Eduard Heger and Ľudovít Ódor for the poor state of public finances and suggested that the media would like to conceal from the public the positive assessment of the consolidation by the European Commission (the EC has stated that the public finance recovery plan complies with the required rules). The media, he said, had also lied about the coalition crisis, which they presented as real, despite the fact that the governing coalition was "passing laws without any problems". However, the possibility of early elections was hinted at by the prime minister himself at the SMER-SSD meeting on 17 November.

The third post belongs again to Milan Uhrík, who boasted of blocking the vote on the condemnation of Robert Fico in the European Parliament. The vote should have been held for Fico's acceptance of the Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to the official celebrations of the end of the Second World War in Moscow. The celebrations will take place on 9 May 2025. The vote was supposed to be a symbolic gesture by which the EP would express its support for Ukraine against Russian military aggression, but it was blocked by a group of far-right MEPs united in the Europe of Sovereign Nations faction. Despite the fact that attending an official event in Moscow is an unprecedented step that legitimises Russian aggression against Ukraine and promotes a false image of Russia as a peacemaker, Uhrík approves Fico's decision. In the video, he added that "progressives have no business worrying about where the prime minister of a sovereign country goes or doesn't go".

The next post was published by Milan Mazurek, MEP for the Republika party. The post was directed against the EU climate measures. Mazurek described them as nonsense of "green lunatics", who are destroying the lives of the Union's citizens. He reacted to the commitment of the UN COP29 climate conference participants to contribute USD 300 billion a year to developing countries by 2035 in climate aid. This is an increase on the previous commitment by the developed world to contribute $100 billion a year by 2025. This commitment was made on the basis of the responsibility of developed countries for the damage that arises because of the high level of carbon emissions in other parts of the world. Mazurek presented it in a very manipulative way, pointing to the high prices of housing and foods and claiming that young people in the Member States cannot afford to live and have children, but this is largely due to national economies, not to Union action.

The last post was published by Robert Fico. It contained his speech in the Slovak parliament, in which he discussed the appointment of the new European Commission. Fico criticised the re-election of EC President Ursula von der Leyen, but also the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. According to him, Kallas's "absolute inclination towards the United States and her absolute departure from a realistic solution to the conflict in Ukraine" is evident. At the same time, Fico called the European Council and the European Commission "war cabinets". He also claimed that the EU was applying a double standard by dealing with the arrest of Georgian opposition leader Nika Gvaramia, "but the arrest of the head of the Slovak opposition years ago was silently ignored". He was thus reviving his old conspiracy narrative about the alleged attempts to criminalise and eliminate the opposition, including SMER-SSD, during 2020-2023.

Criticism of the coalition downplayed as "propaganda"

On domestic political issues, the attention of disinformation agents has been focused primarily on the goal of demonising the opposition, but also the mainstream media and basically all critics of the current ruling coalition. Both Prime Minister Robert Fico and Slovak Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok (Hlas - SD) were largely involved in refuting the alleged lies of the opposition and the media about the consolidation of public finances, the state of the Slovak police and the misconduct of its members, or about the coalition crisis and disagreements between MPs, which for some time made the quorum of the Slovak parliament impossible.

As already observed in recent months, members of the government tend to attribute responsibility for negative political, economic and social phenomena to the opposition and the media allegedly allied with opposition parties. Among other things, they are 'forgetting' that they are the ones in power. Robert Fico spoke primarily about the issue of consolidating public finances, returning to a tried and tested diversionary tactic: he repeatedly blamed the previous governments of Igor Matovič and Eduard Heger for the poor state of public finances. At a press conference at the beginning of December, he said that the worst state of public finances in the EU "was given to us as a gift by Mr Matovič, Mr Heger and Mr Ódor [prime ministers serving between 2020 – 2023]". In Fico’s view, it is the representatives of the current opposition who are responsible for the rising prices and the state of public finances. During the years 2020 to 2023, they not only perceived and tolerated, but also directly "organised the abuse of criminal law to liquidate the opposition", according to Fico.

In this sense, according to Fico, the opposition's efforts to initiate a vote on the dismissal of Interior Minister Šutaj Eštok [note: it was postponed until early February 2025] were supposed to be a cover for the opposition to hide its responsibility. In fact, the motion of no confidence in the Interior Minister was triggered by a number of events which, according to the opposition, reveal his underestimation of the problem of police brutality. Added to this is the lack of action on bomb threats in schools, which have been occurring for several months, as well as the abolition of the National Crime Agency (NAKA), the mass departure of police officers and the unprofessional investigation into the assassination of the prime minister Fico in Handlová in May this year.

Despite the seriousness of these accusations, Fico speaks of "senseless, blunt propaganda on the part of Šimečka [the leader of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party] and co." supported by his father, the daily SME, Denník N and Aktuality. The reasons for the dismissal of Šutaj Estok are, in his opinion, "absolutely fabricated". At the press conference, however, he attacked only the argument that the interior minister's proposal to introduce cameras in Slovak schools would interfere with the rights of children who would be monitored.

The proposal has been included in a new strategy to strengthen school security through the installation of CCTV systems, which talks about using artificial intelligence to detect risky behaviour. Both the opposition and security experts point to the potential risks of a facial recognition system in the event of a data leak, but this is dismissed by the Ministry of Interior as an unjustified concern.

In a Facebook video, Šutaj Eštok also responded to an incident from Košice, where a homeless man succumbed to injuries inflicted by a police officer during an intervention on 5 November. Šutaj Eštok said in the video that measures are being taken in response to the incident: body cameras are being introduced so that the actions of police officers are monitored in practice, and there will be an increase in the intensity of training for police officers.

However, this statement is inaccurate, as the police cameras are only implemented as a part of the pilot project in Bratislava and Košice, where police officers will receive six (Bratislava) and ten (Košice) body cameras respectively. For more than a decade, the expert public, ombudsmen and human rights activists have been calling for their widespread deployment. Yet, Šutaj Eštok presented the pilot project as a solution, claiming that the opposition was "cynically exploiting a tragedy for a political attack".

Similarly, the Minister of Interior attacked the previous governments of Igor Matovič, Eduard Heger and Ľudovít Ódor, during which more than 5 thousand officers supposedly left the police, while the governments allegedly showed zero effort to reverse this trend and the current opposition has been destroying public trust in the police for years. Indeed, according to the data of the Ministry of Interior, approximately 5 thousand police officers have left between 2020 and 2023. However, Šutaj Eštok has overestimated these numbers in the past and tried to downplay the current situation. Also in the video he argued for the introduction of the so-called stabilisation bonus, which was supposed to help maintain the number of police officers, but in reality it has not been very successful so far.

​​According to the interior minister, as well as according to Prime Minister Fico, the opposition's reasons for proposing his dismissal are inadequate. The minister stated that the real reason for his dismissal is the fact that he has "stopped the war in the police and is trying to investigate all the dirty things that have been going on during the three and a half years of the governments of Matovič, Heger and Ódor". Liberals and progressives were allegedly involved in this war from the very beginning. The situation was thus summed up by Šutaj Eštok claiming that it is all an opposition show in which he is being attacked with lies, distortions and hatred.

"Bloodthirsty media" as accomplices of the opposition

In addition to attacks on the opposition, Prime Minister Fico also returned to the topic of the so-called traditional media. The above-mentioned tensions in the parliament are, according to him, "fodder for bloodthirsty media or foreign-funded NGOs". In this regard, the Prime Minister added that the opposition does nothing and offers nothing because "all the dirty work is done for the opposition by the so-called mainstream media". He sought to create the impression that the media was ignoring the positive steps taken by the government or unfairly portraying it in a bad light. In the video, Fico claimed that the media was concealing the positive assessment of the consolidation and the draft state budget published by the European Commission. He later repeated this accusation at a press conference. According to the Prime Minister, therefore, "the media lie, mislead, conceal, ignore, revel only in any criticism of the ruling coalition".

Attacks against the media came from several sources, for example from MEPs Ľuboš Blaha (SMER - SSD) and Milan Mazurek (Republika), who associated the traditional media with the portrayal of harmful progressivism and liberalism. Blaha used the subject of the new movie "Miki", about the Slovak mobster Mikuláš Černák, for this purpose. In a post on Telegram, which was also picked up by the official SMER - SSD Facebook page, he misleadingly dramatised the story by claiming that the liberal media were portraying Černák as a hero, producing glorifying movies about him. This is allegedly a manipulation of the audience and proof that "the liberal cultural community, including the media and the film industry, has completely lost its moral compass - they kick heroes, they admire murderers". The result, according to Blaha, is that "misguided kids" are voting for Progressive Slovakia.

In a Facebook video, Milan Mazurek drew attention to the fact that outgoing US President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter in cases of illegal gun possession and tax violations. According to Mazurek, Denník N falsely reported on the issue when it published Biden's statement that he would not pardon his son, which Mazurek incorrectly described as misinformation. In fact, Denník N published the politician's statement and later also an article stating that the pardon for Hunter Biden was granted by the President after all.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic, Juraj Blanár (SMER - SSD), also commented on the pardon granted to Hunter Biden. In a video on Facebook, he claimed that after this decision by Joe Biden, the Slovak media space was filled with deafening silence of progressives. In addition to the manipulative use of the enemy label, Blanár was quite ostentatiously trying to stir the waters with his video - he threatened to summon the US ambassador to Slovakia and used the situation to mention moments in which he believed other ambassadors were too critical of Slovakia's so-called sovereign foreign policy. Biden's move was thus wrongly presented almost as a threat to Slovakia's national interests.

Russia can't be out of the picture

The end of the year on the disinformation scene failed to surprise even in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. In addition to the confirmation of Fico's plan to visit Moscow on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the topic of the post-electoral situation in Georgia and Romania was also on the agenda.

The prime minister announced his decision to accept an invitation to the celebrations of victory over fascism in Moscow in a post on his Facebook page. The post was the most successful in the entire Slovak information space, generating more than 28 thousand interactions. In it, the prime minister inherently operated with the glorification of the Russian Federation and the historical legacy of the liberation of the territory of Slovakia by the Red Army during World War II.

While this is a historical fact that cannot be argued with, it should be added that it has long been instrumentalized by both Soviet and Russian propaganda to legitimize the Kremlin's imperialist appetites. Fico seems happy to take part in this instrumentalisation, even as a compliant prime minister whose presence in Moscow will, among other things, undermine the unity of the Western attitude towards Russia. In the words of Otto Šimko, a Holocaust survivor and former partisan who declined a similar invitation to Moscow, the present-day Putin's Russia can no longer be considered "identical to the Russia of the wartime days".

Fico has received criticism for his plans from the opposition, but also from the international community. Several members of the SMER-SSD party came to his aid. It should be noted, for example, that Zuzana Plevíková, a MP (SMER – SSD), refused to say that the visit to Moscow should be considered a disgrace. According to her, it is a tribute with the potential to unite the nations that contributed to the defeat of fascism. However, Plevíková dismissed the current Russian aggression, which in many ways resembles the fascist stamping.

Quite expectedly, this was no different in the case of Ľuboš Blaha. In his post on Telegram, the MEP said that he would be happy to join Fico in 2025. He continued with a manipulative reversal of optics – the fact that the West rejects friendly relations with the Russian aggressor is sold by Blaha as a manifestation of the Russophobic wave. In the usual spirit of his posts, which have neither boundaries nor substance, he also attacked Kaja Kallas, the future EU foreign policy chief, whom he described as "mentally disturbed".

The MEP has long made ignorance of facts and geopolitical realities, and spreading manipulative claims designed to discredit the West, his favourite discipline. In another post, he assessed the situation in Kosovo, Syria and Georgia. In a truly conspiratorial manner, he sees everywhere the presence of so-called Western warmongers, who are supposed to be responsible for the explosion in the north of Kosovo or the attack on the government in Damascus. He claims that this is a "hybrid attack on Russia".

In Georgia, for his part, the MEP says that a "Maidan is being prepared". These were to be organised by the so-called Soros' supporters. It was not to be otherwise in the case of Romania, where the results of the presidential election were annulled after a pro-Russian candidate won the first round. However, Blaha made no further mention of the cause, i.e. Russian interference in the electoral process. The MEP sees similar efforts at destabilisation in Slovakia – albeit without evidence. By making similar claims, Blaha is exporting two commodities – fear and Russian propaganda – which seek to legitimise the narrative of Russia as a victim of international injustice and the West. Blaha sees the latter as "third-rate nimrods from the war factions in Brussels and Strasbourg".

Eduard Chmelár has followed similar narratives about Georgia and Romania. The former adviser to the prime minister accused the West and the EU of "geopoliticizing the elections". Manipulatively, he asks whether it is a problem that "the one [candidate] who was preselected did not win". By making similar statements, Chmelár creates an image of the West as a sinister force pulling the strings behind the scenes. Paradoxically, he ignores Russia's hybrid action and interference in the elections, of which it is (much more tangibly) suspected in the case of both Georgia and Romania.

Project Infosecurity.sk organized by Adapt Institute, which is supported by the Prague office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, continuously monitors the activities of both Slovak and foreign disinformation actors, but focuses mainly on the former. The project activities are built upon daily monitoring of emerging disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories in the online information space. This approach allows the analysts to identify disinformation posts and narratives that resonated with the public the most, as well as to find out where they originated, and how they spread and evolved on social media. The report takes the form of a bi-weekly summary of arising trends in the spread of malicious information content online. Based on that, Infosecurity.sk can inform the public about emerging and current trends in the field of disinformation, manipulation, and propaganda.