Opposition lawmakers in Slovakia have demanded official explanations from the government and Prime Minister Robert Fico after the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, citing sources in Germany’s security services, that a foiled August plot to set fire to a plant of the Ukrainian drone maker Skyeton near Prešov may be linked to Russia’s military intelligence service.
“It is completely unacceptable that we learn about a Russian trail in an attack on Slovak soil this way, and not from the prime minister. It is equally unacceptable that the Security Council has still not been convened on this case,” said Tomáš Valášek, a lawmaker from the opposition party Progressive Slovakia. The opposition is calling for a Security Council meeting and full information on the investigation.
According to police, in late August officers from the Office for the Fight Against Organized Crime (ÚBOK), working with Slovakia’s civilian and military intelligence services, thwarted an arson attack on a production site in Haniska near Prešov. Investigators seized an incendiary mixture of gasoline and polystyrene (homemade “napalm”), tools, phones, an action camera and a hand-drawn plan of the facility. About 70 people could have been on site at the time of the planned attack; potential damage was estimated in the tens of millions of euros.
Three foreign nationals were detained: two Latvian citizens and one Ukrainian citizen. Two were arrested in Slovakia; the third was detained in Germany under a European arrest warrant. They have been charged with preparing an especially serious crime of general endangerment, committed for hire. The investigation is ongoing. Police have not officially commented on claims of involvement by foreign intelligence services.
According to FAZ, the same group, linked to a GRU special operations unit and operating from Slovak territory, also figures in the September 3 arson attack near the Munich headquarters of defense firms Rohde & Schwarz and Helsing. German investigators connect these episodes, as well as a drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport, to a single network.
