Daily Times

Slovak voters are being flooded with disinformation from home and abroad ahead of Saturday’s elections set to determine whether the country will change its foreign policy in Russia’s favour.

The EU and NATO member of 5.4 million people has been under a barrage of online misinformation and disinformation for years, much of it coming from pro-Kremlin sources, analysts told AFP. “The disinformation ecosystem in Slovakia… is reaching its zenith today” ahead of the vote, said Peter Duboczi, editor-in-chief at Infosecurity.sk.

He said Slovak politicians were the main disseminators and the vote would be the first in recent years “to reflect the full potential of disinformation”.

Analysts point to three parties pushing false anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian claims: the leftwing Smer-SD of former premier Robert Fico, the nationalist Republika and the Slovak National Party (SNS).

Fico is the favourite to become the new prime minister and both Republika and SNS are set to garner enough votes to gain parliamentary seats, according to polls.

Tomas Krissak, an analyst at Gerulata Technologies, a start-up focused on hybrid threats, said these parties “use political manipulation as a campaign tool”.

Reset, a London-based nonprofit, said it had registered over 365,000 election-related disinformation items on Slovak social media in the first two weeks of September.

It said posts violating social media terms of service and containing disinformation had generated more than five times as much exposure as an average post.

More than 15 percent of such posts have originated from Pro-Kremlin accounts, Reset said in a report.

Even before the election, Fico and Republika chair Milan Uhrik have warned voters of potential vote rigging — a strategy used by Donald Trump in his failed re-election bid for the US presidency in 2020. Fico has also said the war in Ukraine had originated in 2014, with Ukrainian “fascists” killing Russian civilians.