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Two exit polls released early Sunday after Slovakia\u2019s parliamentary election showed a tight finish between a liberal party that wants to maintain robust support for Ukraine in its war with Russia and a Russia-friendly populist party, in a vote that many in Europe saw as a bellwether of support for the war.<\/p>\n
But neither of the top two finishers came close to winning a majority, leaving the shape of the next government \u2014 and its policy toward Ukraine \u2014 dependent on the performance of smaller parties with widely differing views on Russia and on their readiness to form a coalition with either Progressive Slovakia, a liberal grouping, or a rival party headed by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister strongly opposed to helping Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Faced with a plethora of choices between communists and far-right nationalists, Slovakia, a small Central European nation that borders Ukraine, voted on Saturday in a general election freighted with outsize consequences<\/a> about the West\u2019s support for Ukraine.<\/p>\n Twenty-five parties from across the political spectrum put up candidates for Parliament, but the first- and second-place finishers \u2014 separated by less than two percentage points, according to exit polls \u2014 offered diametrically opposed positions on Ukraine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Exit polls indicated that Progressive Slovakia, a liberal party that wants to continue support for Ukraine, had finished just ahead of Mr. Fico\u2019s Smer party.<\/p>\n Analysts cautioned that the official vote count, which was expected to drag on until Sunday morning, could put either party in the lead but with such a narrow margin that both have a shot at forming a coalition government. Early official results that gave Mr. Fico\u2019s party a strong lead came mostly from villages, which are more conservative, and did not include liberal-tilting cities like Bratislava, the capital.<\/p>\n The seemingly close result leaves Voice, the social democratic party of Peter Pellegrini, an estranged former ally of Mr. Fico, as a likely kingmaker.<\/p>\n Despite near-constant political upheaval since the last election in 2020, Slovakia, a member of the European Union and NATO, has been a particularly robust and steady supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia, welcoming refugees and providing millions of dollars\u2019 worth of mostly Soviet-era weapons. It was the first country to provide Ukraine with fighter jets and air defense missiles.<\/p>\n Given Mr. Fico\u2019s vociferous opposition to aiding the Ukrainians, the election was closely watched across Europe as an indicator of mainstream consensus on the war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Slovakia\u2019s election, for most voters, was not primarily about Ukraine, said Dominika Hajdu, an analyst with Globsec, a research group based in Bratislava. \u201cIt was more about values, conservatism versus liberalism\u201d and bread-and-butter issues, like food and fuel prices.<\/p>\n As in many other European countries, Slovakia has a proportional voting system that helps smaller parties win seats, so long as they get 5 percent of the vote, and that makes the shape of the government dependent on which smaller parties meet the threshold.<\/p>\n Mr. Pellegrini, whose Voice party finished third, according to exit polls, campaigned on promises to strengthen the state and lower grocery prices. He shares the anti-immigrant views of Mr. Fico, his former boss, and of the far-right nationalist party Republika. Unlike Mr. Fico and the far right, though, Mr. Pellegrini has shown no interest in halting support for Ukraine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Fico\u2019s party, Smer, led in the polls throughout much of the campaign but lost momentum in recent days, as previously undecided voters, apparently put off by Mr. Fico\u2019s often aggressive style, sought calmer alternative candidates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Fico served for more than a decade as Slovakia\u2019s prime minister until he was forced to step down in 2018 amid widespread public outrage over the murders of Jan Kuciak, a young investigative journalist<\/a> who was digging into government corruption, and his fianc\u00e9e, Martina Kusnirova.<\/p>\n Mr. Fico was succeeded as prime minister by Mr. Pellegrini, a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 who later formed his own rival party.<\/p>\n Progressive Slovakia, which narrowly failed to win seats in the last election, appears to have benefited in Saturday\u2019s vote by its distance from Mr. Fico and the often squabbling center-right politicians who have run the country for the last three years in a series of unstable coalitions.<\/p>\n Previously, the only E.U. member to speak out forcefully against aiding Ukraine was Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, an increasingly authoritarian leader whose constant clashes with his nominal partners in NATO and the E.U. on a range of issues have made his country a noisy outlier with limited influence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Slovakia, governed since 2020 by a series of mainstream, if fractious and very unstable, coalition governments, played an important and early part in rallying Europe\u2019s support to Ukraine and cannot be as easily ignored as Hungary, which officials in Brussels and other major European capitals have come to see as an inveterate troublemaker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The failure of any party to win anything near a majority on Saturday opened the way to laborious back-room haggling over the composition of a new coalition government which could leave either of the probable top two finishers \u2014 Mr. Fico\u2019s Smer party or Progressive Slovakia, led by Michal Simecka, a former journalist and liberal member of the European Parliament \u2014 in overall charge.<\/p>\n Mr. Fico vowed during the campaign to \u201cnot send a single cartridge\u201d of ammunition to Ukraine if elected and staked out increasingly pro-Russian views, a position amplified by a galaxy of small but influential Moscow-friendly news media outlets in Slovakia and pro-Russian voices on social media.<\/p>\n The vice president of the European Union\u2019s executive arm in Brussels, Vera Jourova, a Czech politician responsible for digital policy, called last week on digital platforms like Facebook and TikTok to do more to blunt what she described as Russia\u2019s \u201cmultimillion-euro weapon of mass manipulation\u201d ahead of elections in Slovakia, and in Poland in mid-October.<\/p>\n The Slovak vote, she said, was a \u201ctest case\u201d for Russia\u2019s ability to influence voters\u2019 choices through online disinformation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Slovakia has deep pools of genuine sympathy for Russia stretching back to the 19th century, when an early Slovak nationalist politician and writer, Ludovit Stur, despairing of the Austro-Hungarian Empire\u2019s grip on the region, looked to Russia, a fellow Slavic nation, for help. He suggested that land inhabited by Slovaks be absorbed by the Russian Empire.<\/p>\n Russia has worked hard to strengthen these historical sympathies through pro-Russian media outlets and groups like Brat za Brata,<\/a> or Brother for Brother, a belligerent motorcycle gang affiliated with the Kremlin-sponsored Night Wolves bikers\u2019 group in Russia, which has an influential presence on social media. <\/p>\n