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PRAGUE. — Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot multiple times and gravely wounded yesterday after a political event in an attempted assassination that shocked the small country and reverberated across Europe.

The pro-Russian leader, 59, was reported to be fighting for his life after being hit in the stomach. 

At least four shots were fired outside a cultural centre in the town of Handlova, nearly 140 km northeast of the capital, where Fico was meeting with supporters, the government said.

A suspect was in custody, the country’s president said in a televised statement. Fico was taken by helicopter to a hospital.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

Fico’s return to power last year on a pro-Russian, anti-American message led to even greater worries among fellow European Union members that he would lead his country further from the Western mainstream.

His government halted arms deliveries to Ukraine, and critics worry that he will lead Slovakia — a nation of 5.4 million that belongs to NATO — to abandon its pro-Western course and follow in the footsteps of Hungary under populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

President-elect Peter Pellegrini, an ally of Fico, called the shooting “an unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy. If we express other political opinions with pistols in squares, and not in polling stations, we are jeopardizing everything that we have built together over 31 years of Slovak sovereignty.” – AP