Fico: I was in Vietnam, but the amount does not agree

“I spent a vacation in Vietnam, about nine days,” Fico said in a video shot during the walk. He explained that he was staying in a resort to which there is a direct flight from Bratislava and where tours are organized by various Slovak travel agencies. He went to Hanoi for informal meetings with Vietnamese officials. According to him, the Vietnamese side provided transportation, security and the meeting place. The meetings were held in the hotel, which “is the subject of so much interest”, said Fico.

In the video, he also published an English-written confirmation from the Capella Hanoi hotel, in which it is written that “Slovak Prime Minister Fico used the services and premises of our facility only for a working meeting on January 2, 2025, which was held at the initiative of the Vietnamese side.”

In the first days of this year, some Slovak media wondered where Fico was. It happened after he published a video apparently taken in the suite of the Capella Hanoi hotel. Fico’s foreign trips became the subject of political debates and disputes in Slovakia, especially because he went to Moscow before Christmas to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the import of Russian gas, the transit of which to Europe via Ukraine has been stopped since January. The head of the Slovak government negotiated with Putin despite the fact that Russia, on the initiative of the head of the Kremlin, has been waging an offensive war against Ukraine for almost three years.

In recent days, the Slovak prime minister has been causing a stir with his actions and rhetoric. On Thursday, after the meeting in Brussels, he threatened Ukraine that the EU would veto aid to the attacked country and withdraw benefits from refugees in Slovakia if Kyiv does not restore the transit of Russian gas.

Thousands of Slovaks expressed their disapproval of Robert Fico’s actions, especially his December trip to Moscow, on the squares of several Slovak cities on Friday. The largest gathering under the slogan Slovakia is Europe, enough of Russia! took place in Bratislava’s Náměstí svobody near the government office building, where, according to the organizers’ estimates, about 15 thousand people arrived.