Britské listy interview 700. Fico, Vietnam, Moscow, Putin and Trump
7. 1. 2025
I don't know if you should even listen to this scary but realistic interview. It's the stuff of nightmares. And will there really be a nuclear war? And is Robert Fico really behaving in this way because he has correctly predicted the future? (Britské listy editor Jan Čulík)
Fico's holiday in a luxury Vietnamese hotel after a visit to Moscow, where the Slovak prime minister went all alone and nobody knows what he actually negotiated there. Fico's videos in which he accuses Western allies in the EU and NATO of treason and implicitly swears allegiance to Russia. Add to this a collection of videos that show the purely mafia-like ways of the current government in Slovakia. How much longer can Slovakia remain in the EU and NATO? And isn't Fico's behaviour just an attempt to catch the right wind with the arrival of Trump in the White House? An interview with Arpad Soltész, a Slovak journalist living in the Czech Republic.
Full transcript of this interview in English:
Bohumil Kartous: In the New Year, we are delighted to welcome back Arpad Soltész, a Slovak-born journalist living in the Czech Republic and a writer. Hello.
Arpád Soltész: Hello.
Bohumil Kartous: We will, of course, talk about Slovakia and the situation in Slovakia. By the way, has it been possible to identify where the Slovak Prime Minister is? There is so much uncertainty at the moment about where he actually is.
Arpád Soltész: We don't know where he is at the moment, but he obviously filmed his last video in a luxury Hanoi hotel. It's a matter of taste, how much someone likes or dislikes it. I think a night there costs €6200. And it's quite clearly identified, even Denník N journalists managed to call the hotel and the receptionist put them through to Mr Fico, but he didn't pick up the phone.
Bohumil Kartous: Is the taxpayer paying for Mr Fico's holiday, or is this actually an official visit? How is it actually? But he must not have bothered to tell anyone, right.
Arpad Soltész: We don't know. It's obviously not an official visit because nobody knows anything about it, and nobody is communicating anything about it in any way. Apparently it is a private trip, although it is interesting that in Vietnam at the moment the president is To Lam, that is the man who came to Bratislava to pick up a Vietnamese citizen who had been kidnapped from German territory, and the Slovak government at the time lent him a Slovak government aircraft special to get him across the border of the European Union.
Bohumil Kartous: I remember that. Could you please just briefly recall when this happened and what the circumstances were? Actually, this de facto kidnapping here.
Arpád Soltész: He was a Vietnamese citizen who, probably as treasurer of some Vietnamese communist clique, robbed his own people, applied for political asylum in Germany, from where he was kidnapped by the Vietnamese secret service, drugged, beaten, loaded into some van which was parked in Bratislava in front of the Bôrik Hotel. Lan came to that hotel for an official visit, he was the head of the Vietnamese security services at the time, he negotiated with the Slovak Home Secretary Robert Kaliňák. The negotiations lasted I think an hour or something very short and it was like that, very suddenly it all came to a head and Robert Kaliňák lent them a Slovak government aircraft to return home, which they used to fly from Bratislava to Moscow. Later, there was a big scandal ab out it. Of course, Robert Kaliňák denied that he knew that they were planning to smuggle a kidnapped Vietnamese citizen out of the European Union in this way. I do not know exactly how it was. It is almost incomprehensible that how all the Slovak officials, security guards and other people could have missed the fact that they had someone there who was clearly not OK. They claimed that they thought he was drunk. But so it was a huge international scandal, after which Slovakia later also severely curtailed diplomatic relations with Vietnam, but I think there is a fundamental warming up of relations with Vietnam now again. Robert Fico is definitely not in hostile territory. Yes, well let's put it this way.
Bohumil Kartous: He certainly hasn't been kidnapped. He is not suffering there.
Arpád Soltész: Apparently, like the kidnapped Vietnamese citizen, he flew there from Moscow. We assume, we just don't know when exactly and by what means, by what plane.
Bohumil Kartous: Well, the whole thing actually fits in some way into the image of the mafia state, which Slovakia is to a large extent, according to what is actually possible, when someone in a political position is able to break many rules that must be observed. And you have now pointed out that Prime Minister Fico flew to Vietnam directly from Moscow? Is that right?
Arpad Soltész: We just assume that, we don't know. He might have stopped somewhere. We don't know how he got to Moscow, because the last time we saw him was in Brussels. Then all of a sudden we saw him in Moscow, in the Kremlin shaking hands with Vladimir Putin, and then he made some videos, the message of which is basically that Ukraine is an enemy of NATO and the European Union are traitors who are selling us out to a hostile Ukraine, and Russia is the power that could save us. That's roughly the message of those videos. It was basically clear the moment he shook hands with Vladimir Putin. It seems to me that he's pushing the saw a little too hard in those videos. So he said that he went to Moscow to deal with the gas, which is absolute nonsense, he would have had to deal with that in Kiev. And nobody knew where he was making those videos from. It had this very bizarre background, this golden curtain and some weird retro phone and a fancy lamp. Some holidaymakers pointed out that they had seen Fico in Vietnam, because Slovak tourists are better than some intelligence agencies.
Bohumil Kartous: It's an Asian Mar-a-Lago. That's what most of these people have in common.
Arpad Soltész: Yes, it's also very flashy, but let's say that people who are more into minimalist or more understated style would probably not feel completely comfortable there. But Mr. Fico in one of those videos it was really strange that he was wearing a suit jacket on which it seemed that his button was going to fly off in a moment. It was really very tight as well, and then we noticed that he was actually wearing a white polo shirt in that jacket. So it looks like he hastily borrowed a jacket from someone somewhere and had some sort of white polo shirt to shoot a video. And of course he's very particular about his appearance like most people who come from small towns and get into high positions and aren't quite sure of their own appearance, so that was one of the first things that struck me.
Bohumil Kartous: he probavbly borrowd it from a Vietnamese receptionist. You say he flew from Moscow, that's important, the visit to Moscow. I noticed that when he and Mr. Putin shook hands, Putin was already at a certain point like turning away from him, it looked like it probably wasn't quite a friendly visit, it was more like a visit that almost Mr. Fico had probably somehow begged for. It felt like that to methat it wasn't like it was an equal-on-equal visit, which I guess is pretty natural.
Arpád Soltész: We don't know at all what Robert Fico stitched up there, or at what cost, but it's quite clear that it wasn't just a PR activity where Vladimir Putin did Robert Fico the favour of having his picture taken with him for the campaign.
Bohumil Kartous: Well, the very presence of the Prime Minister of a country that is a member of the European Union and NATO gives Putin a certain legitimization of what he is doing, here he can say to his Russians, I have prime ministers like Orbán and Fico coming here to see me, these are the sensible ones. They want to negotiate, you see we're in negotiations on Ukraine, on other things, so I think for Putin it's basically very useful for, let's say, some internal propaganda within Russia and also to actually lobby or to worry the citizens of the European Union and NATO member states by just having this collaborator coming over here and representing both of those structures at the same time, so I think it's of some importance to him as well. And so what do you estimate that Fico might get from Russia? It's probably not going to be energy, because Slovakia is dependent on infrastructure basically from the European Union and the West.
Arpád Soltész: We can only speculate. I can imagine that he went to negotiate some guarantees of his own personal status in exchange for services. And I think that Robert Fico really doesn't count on the fact that Slovakia will last in NATO and in the European Union indefinitely, and Slovakia really doesn't meet the geopolitical minimum of statehood if it stays alone, so either it needs allies like it has in the West, or if Robert Fico says that those allies are useless to us because they are selling out to our enemy, which is Ukraine, then in that case it needs a Russian hegemon or somebody like that, who will give it at least some formal sovereignty. I think this is a naive expectation. But maybe that is how Robert Fico imagines it. It's hard to tell really by the mode in which that negotiation took place, and that's the important thing. We know nothing about it. The Prime Minister of Slovakia was not actually negotiating with Vladimir Putin as a democratically elected Prime Minister who is somehow first among equals and in some institutional framework with some mandate from the government where they agreed to negotiate something there, but went there as a dictator or autocrat who simply makes decisions all by himself of his own volition and on his own whim and negotiates with other leaders when he sees fit, in whatever way he sees fit and about whatever he sees fit and it's nobody else's business.
Bohumil Kartous: You talked about the fact that it is possible that actually in Slovakia the government will not last, because there have been some such disruptions in recent months, several MPs more or less refusing to vote with the coalition. How do you see this? How seriously can one foresee that there will be such a disintegration that would lead to early elections in Slovakia?
Arpád Soltész: The coalition is made up of people who are not capable of professional political performance. It's just - I'm looking for a more polite term than a collection of weirdos, but it's a group of people where more or less everyone is looking for some personal interest of their own. Those personal interests are often very contradictory, and Robert Fico is clearly not investing enough energy in keeping it all together. It should be pointed out, however, that the fact that the coalition may not last and may collapse does not mean that there will then be elections of the type we remember from 1989. It is very naive to think that the political system that was in place until the last elections in Slovakia is unchanging and fixed and that Robert Fico will not have the courage to change it. He is already completely changing the way in which power is exercised. Indeed, his trip to Moscow makes absolute sense and there is nothing at all strange, nothing bizarre or surprising about it, if we assess it in the terms of an autocrat running his own country, and even the trip to Vietnam is perfectly all right then.
Bohumil Kartous: In connection with this, recently video footage from a hunting lodge has been leaked, in which actually here, let's say, the highest representatives of the current government, including the prime minister, including the defense minister, his top allies, are discussing with various -
Arpád Soltész: The director of the current Slovak Intelligence Service, I should point out.
Arpad Soltész: Those videos were already known before the parliamentary elections. They have now published all of them, but the media had them available before and the parts that were in some way in the public interest were published.
Bohumil Kartous: Right. So it's not news.
Arpád Soltész: This is not completely new news. And it's 28 hours of material. I don't think there are many people who have really seen it and listened carefully to the whole lot. Interesting are just the excerpts from it. Yes, I don't think this is disturbing to Robert Fico's electorate in any way.
Bohumil Kartous: Is this the frog that's so overcooked that it doesn't matter any more?
Arpad Soltész: No, it's not a cooked frog. Those people like it just like that. They want to have it like that.
Bohumil Kartous: That's quite worrying because Slovakia is still a partner in the European Union and NATO. You say that -
Arpád Soltész: Formally yes, but when we listen to Robert Fico's messages from Moscow and Vietnam, defacto not anymore.
Bohumil Kartous: Well, the problem is that actually Slovakia cannot be completely removed from these structures, even if we wanted to. That's a big problem. Slovakia would actually have to at least ask to leave the European Union, which it won't do.
Arpád Soltész: I'm not sure that it won't do that. I think that Robert Fico, with this rhetoric, is really preparing his own population for the fact that the West is a traitor that is selling us out. Ukraine is an enemy that threatens us and Russia is our real ally.
And then, when we take this to its logical conclusion, it has no logical conclusion other than leaving the European Union and leaving NATO. At this point in time, he probably would not get away with it in some sort of regular referendum, but I can see it going through in a referendum that is organised in a different way and possibly with some Russian support of the kind that Georgescu in Romania have given. The next parliamentary elections may be the same way. Robert Fico will simply be sure to emerge as the winner and may not even need a coalition partner or have any real opposition. All of this can be arranged if someone is determined, but of course it is not possible to operate with this in the European Union in the long term, and the European Union can still, if its institutions would kindly finally wake up and understand that this is very dangerous on many levels, and take some action. The basis is, of course, immediate cuts in funding, because Robert Fico has nothing but money from the European Union, he has never been interested in the values of the EU. It has never been about freedom and democratic ideals. It is not about the rule of law at all, so for him, the only value of the European Union lies in the money, so the moment they stop funding him, it will be a very easy decision for him.
Bohumil Kartous: Maybe one more comment on the support for him., Robert Fico has an incredible number of likes on his Facebook page. Considering how small a country Slovakia is, there is an indication that actually artificial support is already going on in some way. I mean, the mechanism of abuse of algorithms, which the Russians have perfectly mastered, is probably already running, isn't it.
Arpad Soltész: Of course, it's probably not an operation that starts two days before the elections. And Robert Fico is not a strategist, he is a clever tactician. The strategist is Viktor Orbán, not Robert Fico. But there are already some strategists in the Kremlin. He puts out these different videos at regular intervals, he's sending his political messages to the plebs. Before, they looked like they were written in Budapest and translated from Hungarian. These now look as if they have been translated from Russian and are of a much higher quality.
Bohumil Kartous: They get it from the professionals, then.
Arpád Soltész: It looks as though they now have a better PR team. Just on the other hand, if he has someone who is really responsible for his PR, now is the time to fire him, because those Vietnam videos were so useless. And they leaked the fact that he's in that Vietnam thing and that's one of those things. Obviously it's not going to break him politically, but it's very uncomfortable because when we suspect Robert Fico of political responsibility for doing some billion-dollar damage, how many people can imagine how much a billion is. Few people understand this, but to pay €6200 for one night in a hotel, that's something everybody understands. Even the lowest quality voter can imagine what that means, how many days he can be there from morning till night, that it is perhaps, his personal income for a whole year, or half a year's income. That's what looks stupid.
And even when he insistently felt the need to do those videos really, it could have been done somewhere in front of a completely neutral backdrop that is unidentifiable.He now says that although he was there privately, he was also in some informal talks and he can't say what they discussed, but if it works out for us, it will be good for Slovakia. I think that he really did not want it to be known where he was spending this period. I am wondering when he will be back, to assume that today is still a public holiday in Slovakia. That sometime tomorrow or at the end of the week he will resurface in Bratislava. Interesting that in a similar way, at a similar time, tourists in India also discovered Viktor Orbán in some super luxurious Ayurvedic hotel.
Bohumil Kartous: So Hungary and Slovakia are conquering South and Southeast Asia, apparently.
Arpád Soltész: The most paranoid, not entirely serious-minded remark from my Hungarian colleague was that Did they both go to Asia to avoid nuclear fallout?
Bohumil Kartous: It doesn't quite sound like a joke these days.
Arpád Soltész: As well-informed leaders by the Kremlin, they were therefore safely away from Europe. It was probably not meant to be entirely serious, but yes, it did give me the shivers for a moment, but I don't think this is imminent until January 20.
Bohumil Kartous: Why January 20th?
Arpad Soltész: Because that's when Donald Trump will be inaugurated. That completely changes the rules of the game, any rules of the game will cease to apply, and it has already appeared in a Slovak tabloid that Donald Trump could be in Slovakia in February. In fact, one of the messages from Moscow was that peace talks on Ukraine could take place in Slovakia. This is utter crudity, because even if they could get President Zelensky to do some type of peace talks, he would probably not be willing to go to Bratislava. And if Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Bratislava agree on something -
Bohumil Kartous: That's a very nice idea, but Zelensky will definitely not be there from what is obvious. And neither side is currently interested in holding any negotiations on peace agreements.
But what you're saying: after all, one last important question: aren't Robert Fico and this whole bunch of his minions here actually good visionaries? Don't they see that the world order is changing precisely with the emergence of Donald Trump as the top representative of the new American administration made up of all sorts of fools, adventurers, conspirators and frauds, which is Trump himself according to the US court's verdict, and isn't it actually just foresight that leads Robert Fico to believe that he will then be on the right side of the barricade?
Arpád Soltész: Viktor orbán has such strategic foresight. Robert Fico is only protecting his own skin and he has no room for manoeuvre other than this. I think that he, or Robert Fico, will eventually not be at the negotiating table as nvited guests, but they will be on the menu. And otherwise, what I meant with President Zelensky was not that he would refuse to participate in those peace talks, but that he might not be invited at all. This may be some new Munich where they impose some solution on him that he will not like and we know that Donald Trump, on a personal level, quite definitely does not like President Zelensky, probably even hates him quite a lot. He's pretty vindictive. He absolutely does not care about Europe as such,, the weaker Europe is, the stronger he feels. For Donald Trump, not just politics but all of life is a zero-sum game. He has a distinctly Russian mentality in this, that's what's fascinating about him and I can imagine if Donald Trump, for example, says to Vladimir Putin somewhere in Bratislava, you know, what I don't care about is if you want to drop a nuclear bomb on Kiev to finally make them see sense, we're certainly not going to react to that. At that point, it's over. I think Robert Fico bets that indeed Vladimir Putin is going to rule at least some empire along the lines of the former Soviet Union, and that is absolutely immoral, unacceptable. It means the end of human rights and civil liberties in Slovakia, but it may be a very profitable and wise decision for him personally.
Bohumil Kartous: I understand, I cannot quite imagine that contemporary Europe would tolerate such an attack, although I agree with the fact that Trump is absolutely uninterested in Europe, Europe is for him a cash cow that has not been sufficiently milked, it simply needs to be milked with higher tariffs and higher purchases of defence systems and ammunition from the United States, which is primarily what the increase in defence spending is supposed to be about, which is not a bad thing in itself, of course Europe has neglected that, but I think Trump sees it as an increase in defence spending, particularly buying from the United States. Europe will be shopping for Ukraine and there will be shopping for Europe itself, but I can't quite see Trump going so far as to completely bypass, not Ukraine, but Europe in that he would negotiate with Putin himself about how the war in Ukraine would turn out. So I'm really wondering that's not possible.
Arpad Soltész: I'm not saying that it will be, because in my opinion today even Donald Trump doesn't know what Donald Trump will do tomorrow, not speaking about a month from now. But to expect him to behave rationally and to expect this kind of strategy, that we need to milk something out of Europe in higher defense budgets, I really wouldn't bet anything on that. He's not behaving rationally, he didn't behave rationally even during his first term where he still had people around him who were behaving rationally and correcting him. Those people are no longer there, and we in Slovakia now know this intimately through the government of Robert Fico. He is now surrounded exclusively by people whose only added value is loyalty. They are capable of everything, but they cannot do anything. They simply do not have the professional intellectual human capacity to do so. Like really, it's an army of hilariously loyal idiots. And they have surrounded themselves with the same kind of people in ther US who will blindly carry out any of Donald Trump's random whims. And we know he has a head full of those random whims. So it's going to be a very dangerous situation, and I think Donald Trump humanly will get along much better with Vladimir Putin than he will with President Zelensky.
Bohumil Kartous: Undoubtedly, and we have no choice but to be surprised, even though we would like to live in a world that offers a little more certainty, and thank you for the next interview. And we will certainly contact you again, because the developments in the world and in Slovakia will be very turbulent. Thanks also to you, the viewers of the Britské listy Interviews, for your attention.
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