Tibor Gašpar is a Slovak politician. He was the President of police of Slovakia from 2012 to 2018. He has performed as a Member of the National Council since 2023. Gašpar was alleged to have run for SMER-SD in the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election. Whilst that did not occur, in 2023, Robert Fico invited Gašpar to race for the party ahead of the 2023 Slovak parliamentary election.
The Russian Ambassador to Slovakia Igor Bratchikov sat secretly with Tibor Gašpar in the Slovak parliament, to examine the war in Ukraine and cyber security before dabbling in a pro-Kremlin narrative. The ambassador’s sight in the parliament building, which took place before the endeavoured assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico on the same day, would have gone overlooked had it not been pointed out by a lawmaker from the liberal opposition party SaS Tomáš Szalay who caught him on the premises.
When questioned whether he called on Russia to leave Ukraine during the meeting, Gašpar answered that he had not. He said they talked about the causes of the conflict.
“This conflict also has its cause. The genocide of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, a lack of opportunity to use their language,”
Gašpar briefed journalists after the session with the ambassador repeating the narrative employed by Russian propagandists.
The conference was also attended by other MPs, including Samuel Migaľ, a member of the ruling coalition’s Hlas party. According to Migaľ, Gašpar communicated with Bratchikov about three topics – the anniversary of the end of World War II, the war in Ukraine, and possible future cooperation on cybersecurity.
According to the top opposition party Progressive Slovakia (PS), the Slovak government has pushed Slovakia a little closer to non-democratic countries.
“We have known for a long time that people in Smer are apathetic to Slovak interests and human lives in Ukraine. But they could at least care about appreciating the National Council of the Slovak Republic,”
PS MP and former Slovak ambassador to NATO Tomáš Valášek said.
“By fraternising with Vladimir Putin, they are jeopardising whatever respect we still have among our partners abroad,”
Valášek stressed.
Bratchikov was considered to meet Gašpar in parliament but opposition parties PS and SaS protested against the appointment and stood in front of the room where it was to take place, holding flags in support of Ukraine.
