Russian officials have forcefully pushed back against bombshell claims from a British newspaper alleging Moscow\u2019s hand in a purported assassination plot targeting the Prime Minister of Slovakia. The accusations were derided as \u201ca fit of madness\u201d by a spokeswoman for Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry.<\/p>\n
The controversy began after The Times of London published a report citing unnamed Slovak authorities claiming an assassination attempt had been made on Prime Minister Robert Fico. More explosively, the report alleged Russian intelligence may have been involved in the supposed assassination plot.<\/p>\n
Zakharova laid into the paper\u2019s Bratislava correspondent Peter Conradi who authored the piece, calling his claims \u201ca fit of madness\u201d and warning it\u2019s dangerous to wrap even dried Caspian roach in this paper \u2013 the fish will go crazy.<\/p>\n
No evidence substantiating the accusation of a Russian role in any plot against Fico has been provided by Slovak authorities or The Times. The office of the Prime Minister has not confirmed any assassination attempt took place.<\/p>\n
The harsh Russian denial comes as tensions between Moscow and the West remain high over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Allegations of Russian assassination plots and interference in the domestic affairs of NATO nations have become increasingly common among American and European officials.<\/p>\n
However, the Kremlin has consistently rejected such accusations as baseless fearmongering aimed at discrediting Russia on the world stage. Zakharova\u2019s vehement repudiation of The Times report appears to be the latest example of that pushback.<\/p>\n
Slovakia, a member of NATO and the European Union has taken a largely supportive stance towards Ukraine while also attempting to maintain working relations with Moscow. Whether Wednesday\u2019s news report will impact that delicate balance remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Russian officials seem adamant that the \u201cmadness\u201d of implicating them in outlandish assassination plots will not be allowed to gain traction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The controversy began after The Times of London published a report citing unnamed Slovak authorities claiming an assassination attempt had been made on Prime Minister Robert Fico.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":406,"featured_media":17962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[10709,352,10912,281,280,10913,78,10708,215,9454],"class_list":["post-17961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-bratislava","tag-europe","tag-fico","tag-moscow","tag-nato","tag-peter-conradi","tag-russia","tag-slovak","tag-ukraine","tag-zakharova"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}