When Robert Fico met with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in May this year, the Slovak Prime Minister said that relations between the two countries should go beyond energy supplies. He said that the work of military attaches at both embassies would be resumed. Five months later, the agreement is already beginning to take on concrete dimensions.
Slovakia has sent two military officers to Moscow - Brigadier General Sławomir Staviarski and his deputy, Colonel Ivo Gahir, and is in turn preparing to receive a Russian military attaché in Bratislava, thereby restoring Russia's military-diplomatic representation, which was interrupted due to the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Are there benefits for Slovakia?
This move has drawn criticism from the opposition, which questions the benefits for Slovakia. Opposition parties warn that Russia could use the agreement to step up its intelligence operations in the country.
"An additional military attaché does not fundamentally change the overall picture, the main significance of this appointment is the political signal it sends," Martin Polyaczyk, a former Slovak MP affiliated with the opposition party "Progressive Slovakia", told DW.
"NATO allies will be concerned both about the activities of the newly appointed officer and the political environment in which he will work," he added. The appointments were first reported by the Slovak news website Aktuality.sk on October 8. Both Slovak officers in Russia are on a list of military diplomats serving abroad published by the Slovak Ministry of Defense.
According to public broadcaster STVR, Sławomir Staviarski has been in Moscow since early August. Defense experts, meanwhile, have identified the newly arrived Russian officer as Maxim Verezan, reports Aktuality.sk. Journalists in the media outlet emphasize that Verezan has received approval from the Slovak side, but is not yet on the list of accredited military attaches. Aktuality.sk also reports that the Ministry of Defense has not responded to the question of when Verezan is expected to officially arrive in Bratislava.
Fears of espionage and disinformation
This news brought back memories of the Russian espionage scandal from a few years ago involving Sergei Solomasov, the deputy military attaché at the Russian embassy in Slovakia. In 2021, he was filmed recruiting and handing over money to Bohus Garbar, a contributor to the pro-Russian website Hlavne spravy. Solomasov was expelled from Slovakia the following year, and Garbar was subsequently convicted of espionage and bribery.
Opposition experts told Aktuality.sk that the Slovak attaché in Moscow would be under close surveillance and would gather little useful information, while the reciprocal Russian appointment could facilitate espionage in Slovakia. They warned that the newly appointed officer could conduct influence and disinformation operations, questioning what Slovakia would get in return.
Government defends move
The Slovak government and its supporters, for their part, defended the resumption of contacts as a means of gathering information and maintaining diplomatic representation. In a statement quoted by Slovak public broadcaster STVR, Slovakia's military intelligence said that Staviarski's role was to assess the security and military policy situation and inform the Ministry of Defense.
Richard Gluck, a member of Robert Fico's Smer - Social Democracy party and chairman of the parliamentary committee on defense and security, justified the decision with the presence of American, British and French military diplomats in Moscow. "We were losing a lot of information," Gluck told STVR, stressing that ending Slovakia's military-diplomatic presence in Moscow was a mistake.
"A very serious step"
For retired Lieutenant General Pavel Maczko, however, the circumstances under which previous contacts were severed are crucial. "This is a very serious step that the Fico government is now taking," said Macko, a former deputy chief of defense of Slovakia. He was also the highest-ranking Slovak general in NATO command structures.
“Nothing has changed since 2022, quite the opposite”, he said. “Russia's hostile actions continue to escalate in Slovakia and the region. Russia's war against Ukraine continues with great intensity, as do hybrid activities against Slovakia and its neighbors”, added Maczko. He cited as examples the foiled plot to set fire to a Ukrainian-owned drone factory in eastern Slovakia, as well as suspicions that incidents in the German cities of Munich and Leipzig were linked to Russian operations carried out from Slovak territory.
Maczko also warned that political influence over Slovak intelligence services and the government's pro-Russian policies could further damage intelligence sharing and trust between allies, despite the presence of “a significant number of professional and reliable officers” in Slovak structures.
With an eye on next year's elections?
Former MP Martin Polyaczyk said he suspects that political motives lie behind the decision to restore the military attaché positions, as this comes at a time when Prime Minister Fico is analyzing his chances for re-election next year. "Fico's best chance to build a convincing position for the next elections is to claim that everyone else is getting us into war, and only he wants peace," Polyaczyk told DW.
"I think he will claim that he is the most appropriate person to talk to Putin about ending the war and that this requires an extremely close relationship with him," he explained, adding that Fico is trying not to advertise the important role that Slovak arms manufacturers play in Ukraine.
Officially, however, the weapons are supplied under commercial contracts, not as military aid from the Slovak government. Polyaczyk distinguished Slovakia's official commitments from the trust in its political leadership. According to him, Western partners are used to Fico's behavior. "Slovakia is officially fulfilling its commitments to NATO," he said. “But formal compliance with commitments does not in itself solve the issue of political trust“, added Polyachik, summarizing: “Predictability does not mean reliability“.
Source: www.dw.com