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Hostile to Russia since Soviet tanks appeared near her childhood house in 1968 in what was then Czechoslovakia, the grandmother now delighted to get caught with a soldier who was fighting Russian invaders in Ukraine.
“He was a hero for me,” said Lucia Stasselova, 66, about the soldier, whom she met two years ago in Bratislava, the capital of what is now Slovakia. “Everyone wanted a photo with him. I was very happy to get one.
The soldier, commander of the Georgian Legion, a unit of volunteers who were fighting for Ukraine in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, visited Bratislava for a public discussion on the war in Ukraine.
The former photo of Ms. Stasselova, a retired charity, and the soldier, Mamuka Mamulashvili, has now put it in the line of shooting as a state enemi.
During a recent press conference, Prime Minister Robert Fico underlined an enlarged copy of photography that Ms. Stasselova had Posted on his Facebook page. He presented him as proof that she was a leader in a coup d’etat conspiracy to overthrow his government.
Ms. Stasselova – Mother of five with 13 grandchildren, Roman Catholic from the Church and founder of the Slovakian children’s foundation – may seem like an improbable coup. But for Mr. Fico, she adapts to a sinister profile: she is anti-Russian and pro-Europe, and has a long involvement in non-governmental organizations.
Mr. Fico, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban in neighboring Hungary, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and other authoritarian leaders, has been suspecting for a long time in these organizations, considering them as agents of foreign power, in particular United States, mixing with their internal affairs.
For these leaders, the efforts of President Trump and his advisor Elon Musk to close the American Foreign Aid Agency Usaid, who helped finance non -profit organizations abroad, were a justification for their long campaign against What they consider attempts to impose a liberal, a globalist agenda on their country.
In a Posted on Facebook last week, Mr. Fico congratulated Mr. Musk for his dismantling of the USAID, he accused the agency of spending “several million dollars” to support non -governmental organizations and the media in Slovakia “for political purposes to distort the system politics and promote certain political parties ”.
Ms. Stasselova said that the photo of her with the Georgian commander was “the first and last time” that she had met her. And she added that the charitable body for children that she co -founded and ran for more than a decade never received a penny from Usaid, although he obtained the support of a private American group , THE WK Kellogg Foundation. Nor did she continue, there was no American funding for the organization in which she is currently active, Peace for Ukraine, The organizer of recent gatherings in Bratislava Protestant against the inclination of Mr. Fico to Moscow.
“Why are NGOs the enemy?” Because they have been fighting for democracy in this country for decades, “she said, speaking at her home in a village near Bratislava.
Michal Simecka, the leader of the largest opposition party in Slovakia and, in the account of Mr. Fico, a conspirator of the alleged coup in the coup, said the accusations were “completely confusing”. He said he hoped to overthrow Fico in the next elections, but denied having conspired to overthrow him by violence.
“The whole story of a coup is caught up to distract the attention of real problems,” said Simecka, pointing to recent tax increases, an increase in inflation and the reduction of the majority in the majority Parliament of the trembling coalition of Mr. Fico after the defection of several legislators.
Mr. Fico first warned against a coup in January after Mr. Simecka called for a vote without confidence in Parliament. The motion was derailed after Mr. Fico demanded that the legislators organize a session on closed doors to discuss the secret intelligence equipment exposing an imminent coup.
Mr. Simecka, who has been shown the material, said that it was prohibited by law to reveal its content, but added that “there is no evidence of anything” – only a false declaration Dark of the Hyman NGO working in the context of a large conspiracy to overthrow the government.
“The Prime Minister considers NGOs as sinister actors manipulated by foreign powers,” he said. He added that, in the eyes of the government, USAID had now replaced George Soros, the American financier and philanthropist of Hungarian origin, as a master puppeteer in an alleged world liberal plot.
Michal Vasecka, director of the Bratislava Policy Institute program, a research group funded by European donors, said that the financing of the USAID had played a major role in the support of independent media and non -government groups immediately after the collapse of communism in 1989. But he said, this money had largely dried in the region after Slovakia, the Czech Republic and six other former communists joined the European Union in 2004.
“If the Americans want to save money, this is not the ideal place to do so,” he said. “There are practically none here from Usaid”
One of the greatest beneficiaries of the American government in recent years in Slovakia, according to official documents, has been a Slovak state agency which finances development abroad. Another recipient was the Human Rights League, which received $ 300,000 for a project linked to the crimes committed during the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, which shares a border with Slovakia.
The subsidies of the United States Embassy in Bratislava went to research groups, anti-corruption activists and independent media, but the sums involved were small-a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars.
However, Mr. Vasecka said: “Fico really believes that Slovak civil society is funded by the Americans and if this funding did not exist, everything would be peaceful for him.”
Stasselova said that Mr. Fico had made increasingly wild accusations since an attempt to assassinate her last year. The government at the time attributed the attack to a “lone wolf”, a 71 -year -old amateur poet without a fixed political opinion, but Mr. Fico has since blamed him for his political rivals.
The biggest change, however, was Mr. Fico’s approach to Russia and his invasion of Ukraine. He swore during an electoral campaign in 2023 to stop sending weapons to Ukraine Slovak military actions, but since close victory in the polls, he increased verbal attacks against President Volodymyr Zelensky and the support of ‘Europe for the nation.
In December, he went to Moscow for a meeting with Mr. Putin, breaking with European Union policy to try to isolate the Russian chief.
“I was so shocked when I heard that he had gone to Moscow,” said Stasselova.
It was then, she said, that her group Peace for Ukraine decided that “we had to do something”. The organization, which had previously focused on collecting funds for Ukraine, including $ 680,000 to buy an armored vehicle, began to organize events.
A first demonstration in December only drew 3,000 people, but subsequent rallies have taken place every two weeks since, have regularly increased in size. More than 40,000, unusually large participation in Bratislava, a small town, participated in a rally last week organized under the slogan, “Slovakia is Europe”.
Michala Novakova, 23, a student, organized a sign making fun of Mr. Fico’s claims on a coup: “Where is the coup?”
The event presented a mixture of young people and veterans demonstrators who fear that Mr. Fico will withdraw Slovakia from the European Union and relaunch close ties with Moscow which had prevailed before 1989.
“I don’t want years before 1989 to repeat themselves,” said Dalibor Vojta, 60, electrician. He said that he had never loved Mr. Fico, a former communist who turned into a populist nationalist, but was not worried much where he could take Slovakia until the Prime Minister was Go see Mr. Putin.
Ms. Stasselova said that the creation of a coup d’etat had led to the flooded with abusive messages from her phone. But she was comforted by the fact that no one she knew, took the accusations seriously. “Everyone laughs,” she said.
And sooner or later, she added, the storm will pass: “This week, I am the person to attack. Next week, it will be someone else.
Sara Cincurova Contributed reports.
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