Hostile to Russia ever since Soviet tanks appeared close to her childhood residence in 1968 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the now grandmother was delighted to have her {photograph} taken with a soldier who was combating Russian invaders in Ukraine.
“He was a hero to me,” Lucia Stasselova, 66, mentioned of the soldier, whom she met two years in the past in Bratislava, the capital of what’s now Slovakia. “Everybody needed an image with him. I used to be very completely satisfied to get one.”
The soldier, a commander of the Georgian Legion, a unit of volunteers combating for Ukraine from the previous Soviet republic of Georgia, was visiting Bratislava for a public dialogue in regards to the conflict in Ukraine.
The outdated image of Ms. Stasselova, a retired charity employee, and the soldier, Mamuka Mamulashvili, has now put her within the firing line as an enemy of the state.
At a latest information convention, Prime Minister Robert Fico pointed to an enlarged copy of the {photograph} that Ms. Stasselova had posted on her Facebook page. He offered it as proof that she was a ringleader in a coup plot aimed toward toppling his authorities.
Ms. Stasselova — a mom of 5 with 13 grandchildren, a churchgoing Roman Catholic and a founding father of the Basis for the Youngsters of Slovakia — could appear an unlikely coup plotter. However for Mr. Fico, she suits a sinister profile: She is anti-Russia and pro-Europe, and has a protracted file of involvement in nongovernmental organizations.
Mr. Fico, together with Prime Minister Viktor Orban in neighboring Hungary, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and different authoritarian leaders, has lengthy been suspicious of such organizations, seeing them as brokers of international powers, significantly the USA, meddling of their inside affairs.
For these leaders, the efforts of President Trump and his adviser Elon Musk to close down the American international support company U.S.A.I.D., which has helped fund nonprofits overseas, have been a vindication of their lengthy marketing campaign towards what they see as makes an attempt to impose a liberal, globalist agenda on their nations.
In a Facebook post this past week, Mr. Fico congratulated Mr. Musk on his dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. He accused the company of spending “a number of million {dollars}” to help nongovernmental organizations and media shops in Slovakia “for political functions to deform the political system and favor sure political events.”
Ms. Stasselova mentioned the image of her with the Georgian commander was “the primary and final time” she had met him. And she or he added that the youngsters’s charity she co-founded and ran for greater than a decade by no means acquired a penny from U.S.A.I.D., although it did get help from a non-public American group, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Nor, she continued, has there been any American funding for the group she is presently energetic in, Peace for Ukraine, the organizer of latest rallies in Bratislava protesting Mr. Fico’s tilt towards Moscow.
“Why are NGOs the enemy? As a result of they’ve been combating for democracy on this nation for many years,” she mentioned, talking at her residence in a village close to Bratislava.
Michal Simecka, the chief of Slovakia’s largest opposition occasion and, in Mr. Fico’s telling, a conspirator within the alleged coup plot, mentioned the accusations have been “completely baffling.” He mentioned he hoped to unseat Mr. Fico on the subsequent election, however denied conspiring to topple him by violence.
“The entire narrative of a coup is made as much as distract consideration from actual issues,” Mr. Simecka mentioned, pointing to latest tax hikes, rising inflation and the shrinking majority in Parliament of Mr. Fico’s shaky coalition after the defection of a number of legislators.
Mr. Fico first warned of a coup in January after Mr. Simecka known as for a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The movement was derailed after Mr. Fico demanded that legislators maintain a closed-door session to debate secret intelligence materials exposing an imminent coup.
Mr. Simecka, who was proven the fabric, mentioned that he was prohibited by legislation from revealing its contents, however added that “there is no such thing as a proof of something” — solely darkish misrepresentation of humdrum NGO work as a part of a giant conspiracy to subvert the federal government.
“The prime minister sees NGOs as sinister actors manipulated by international powers,” he mentioned. He added that, within the eyes of the federal government, U.S.A.I.D. had now changed George Soros, the Hungarian-born American financier and philanthropist, because the grasp puppeteer in a purported international liberal conspiracy.
Michal Vasecka, this system director for the Bratislava Coverage Institute, a analysis group funded by European donors, mentioned funding from U.S.A.I.D. had performed a significant position in supporting unbiased media and nongovernmental teams instantly after the collapse of Communism in 1989. However, he mentioned, this cash had largely dried up throughout the area after Slovakia, the Czech Republic and 6 different previously Communist nations joined the European Union in 2004.
“If the Individuals wish to get monetary savings, this isn’t the place to do it,” he mentioned. “There’s nearly none right here from U.S.A.I.D.”
One of many largest beneficiaries of American authorities cash lately in Slovakia, in response to official information, has been a Slovakian state agency that funds improvement tasks overseas. One other recipient has been the Human Rights League, which acquired $300,000 for a challenge associated to crimes dedicated throughout Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which shares a border with Slovakia.
Grants from the U.S. Embassy in Bratislava went to analysis teams, anti-corruption activists and unbiased media shops, however the sums concerned have been small — just some thousand or tens of hundreds of {dollars}.
But, Mr. Vasecka mentioned, “Fico actually believes that Slovak civil society is funded by the Individuals and if this funding didn’t exist every thing could be peaceable for him.”
Ms. Stasselova mentioned Mr. Fico had been making more and more wild accusations since an try and assassinate him final 12 months. The federal government on the time attributed the assault to an unhinged “lone wolf,” a 71-year-old amateur poet with no fixed political views, however Mr. Fico has since blamed it on his political rivals.
The largest change, nonetheless, has been Mr. Fico’s strategy to Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. He vowed throughout an election marketing campaign in 2023 to cease sending weapons to Ukraine from Slovak navy shares, however since eking out a narrow win at the polls, he has ramped up verbal assaults on President Volodymyr Zelensky and Europe’s help for the nation.
In December, he traveled to Moscow for a gathering with Mr. Putin, breaking with the European Union’s coverage of making an attempt to isolate the Russian chief.
“I used to be so shocked after I heard he had gone to Moscow,” Ms. Stasselova mentioned.
It was then, she mentioned, that her group Peace for Ukraine determined that “we needed to do one thing.” The group, which had beforehand targeted on fund-raising for Ukraine, together with $680,000 to purchase an armored demining car, began organizing protests.
An preliminary protest in December attracted solely round 3,000 individuals, however subsequent rallies, held each different week since, have steadily grown in measurement. Greater than 40,000, an unusually massive turnout in Bratislava, a small metropolis, took half in a rally final week organized beneath the slogan, “Slovakia is Europe.”
Michala Novakova, 23, a scholar, held up an indication mocking Mr. Fico’s claims on a coup within the making: “The place is the coup?”
The occasion featured a mixture of younger individuals and veteran protesters who concern that Mr. Fico needed to take Slovakia out of the European Union and revive the shut ties to Moscow that had prevailed earlier than 1989.
“I don’t need the years earlier than 1989 to repeat themselves,” mentioned Dalibor Vojta, 60, an electrician. He mentioned he by no means preferred Mr. Fico, a former Communist who morphed right into a populist nationalist, however had not nervous a lot about the place he may take Slovakia till the prime minister went to see Mr. Putin.
Ms. Stasselova mentioned that being solid as a coup plotter had resulted in her cellphone being flooded with abusive messages. However she was comforted by the truth that no person she knew took the accusations critically. “Everyone seems to be laughing,” she mentioned.
And eventually, she added, the storm will cross: “This week I’m the individual to assault. Subsequent week will probably be someone else.”
Sara Cincurova contributed reporting.
