DISINFORMATION

A year after the assassination attempt on the prime minister, Slovakia is rebelling against the pandemic treaty. Disinformation spreaders are enjoying the Pfizergate case

Infosecurity.sk provides an overview of disinformation trends that have been on the rise in the last two weeks:

• A year after the assassination attempt on Robert Fico, the disinformation scene is returning to tried-and-tested narratives about a bloodthirsty opposition and hateful media. Those who helped create the atmosphere of hatred are now calling for it to be removed. Nothing new, but still distressing.
• This also applies to the narratives spread by disinformers about the so-called Pandemic Agreement. There was no shortage of conspiracy theories about pharmaceutical companies or plans to introduce global vaccination terror. A popular belief was that the agreement robs national states of their sovereignty. Slovakia ultimately abstained from voting at the World Health Organisation (WHO).
• Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the European Commission (EC) was wrong not to publish text messages between the Commission President and the head of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The purchase of vaccines in 2021 thus brings with it a certain loss of transparency and credibility for the EU. Pfizergate, as the scandal has been dubbed, has provided new ammunition and momentum to the disinformation scene.
• Disinformers have exploited the scandal to further their own interests. There have been attacks on the opposition, attempts to delegitimise civil protests and defend Russian oil. They have used the scandal to achieve what they wanted, essentially without any limits. As usual, some Slovak MEPs continued with xenophobic and homophobic rhetoric against minorities whose interests they see as opposed to those of Slovakia.

Producing assassins and global pandemic terror

After weeks of spreading Russian propaganda based on historical revisionism about World War II, the disinformation scene focused on revitalising well-established narratives. No wonder, as the PM's visit to Moscow was a “success" – he managed to meet with several world dictators at the bilateral level and even recorded a few videos. 15 May 2025 offered an opportunity to commemorate the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Robert Fico.

You guessed it, the narratives about hateful media and hostile opposition returned. In an interview with the media outlet Plus Jeden Deň, the PM returned to the “injustices” and fabricated trials that affected him or his party colleagues. For example, he referred to the criminal proceedings he faced in 2022 for links to corruption cases. According to Fico, this was part of a deliberate campaign to stir up hatred against him. He claims to be paying for his opinions because "political parties and the media have created an atmosphere of hatred". This is why, according to him, "the hateful media and the opposition will never be absolved of responsibility for the assassination." However, as expected, Fico does not mention any of his own statements or those of his party colleagues that may have contributed to creating an atmosphere of hatred. We are attaching a compilation of similar statements put together by the media outlet SME following increasingly frequent attacks against it.

The chairman of the Hlas-SD party, Matúš Šutaj Eštok, also attempted to summarise the situation. In his video, the Minister of the Interior assesses that “unfortunately, less than a year after the assassination attempt in Handlová, the opposition's rhetoric has not changed.” He claims that it is “full of hatred and malice, and even more personal attacks are being used.” Šutaj Eštok continues with warnings against violence and shootings. He also includes legitimate civil protests among the acts of incitement. With this prelude, he presents a draft law on combating hatred on the internet. He asks whether “the time has finally come for social networks and the entire internet to stop being a place for spreading malice, hatred, animosity and insults.”

Tibor Gašpar also attacked the opposition and the media, saying that according to his post “the opposition and its affiliated media continue to add fuel to the fire. They are dividing society, stirring up passions and refusing to take responsibility for the atmosphere they have deliberately fostered for years.” He thus joined the narrative in which legitimate scrutiny or criticism of political actions is portrayed as an unjust witch hunt.

The reason is simple. It is an easy way to avoid responsibility for missteps and sometimes even criminal acts. MEP Ľuboš Blaha of SMER-SD also covers up his fellow party members with his loud rhetoric. He describes Robert Fico's survival as a miracle that supposedly “predestines him to lead Slovakia for many years to come and save it from the liberal plague.” Yes, this is how Blaha describes the opposition parties and the media. Alternatively, he labels Progressive Slovakia as the NSDAP. Blaha's play on words is very dangerous – his talk about the media and the opposition “producing more Cintulas” (the name of the would-be assassin) or knowing “how to create Maidan-style protests” plays precisely to the part of society that welcomes internal enemies as a means of filtering its frustration.

Let us recall that on 19 May 2025, the World Health Assembly (a WHO body) voted to adopt the so-called Pandemic Agreement. Slovakia, along with 10 other states, abstained from the vote. The aim of the document, which was ultimately adopted by 124 countries, is to improve the detection, preparedness and response to future pandemics through better international coordination, information exchange and fairer access to vaccines and medicines.

However, the vote in Slovakia was preceded by a heated debate, the quality of which declined in direct proportion to the growing number of disinformation and conspiracy theories circulating in the media. This is hardly surprising, as many actors were able to dust off the narratives they used a few years ago in the presence of Covid-19. For Anna Belousovová, former politician for the Slovak National Party, the WHO is once again just a “lobbying group of pharmaceutical companies and their investors”, which was supposed to adopt the Pandemic Agreement so that state sovereignty could be replaced by the dictates of the WHO and the EU. At the end of her post, the forced-retired national politician conspires that “some other big scam” is in the works.

Just to add some context, a few days earlier, Belousovová had come up with ultimate proof of the evil intentions of the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in another post. She entered the company name into a translator, played around with the spacing, and came up with the translation “path to death” from the Latin “a stra ze neca”. Belousovová presented her findings as proof that she is not a conspiracy theorist.

Miro Heredoš also lived up to his reputation, labelling the WHO chief as a lackey of Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. On the eve of the vote, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus contacted Robert Fico to ask Slovakia to reconsider its position on the agreement. In another post (roughly following Belousovová's example), Heredoš described the agreement as a “fraud on national states.” The former candidate for the far-right Republika movement naturally linked his dissatisfaction in his post to a conspiracy theory that the WHO director is just a fraud who is partly responsible for “thousands of deaths after vaccination with a genetic mRNA vaccine.” In the comments section, Heredoš then called for Slovakia's immediate withdrawal from the WHO.

Similarly, Ľuboš Blaha echoed this sentiment in his post, claiming that pharmaceutical companies had “experimented with mRNA gene therapy”, which he claimed no one would buy in vaccines. According to him, the pandemic was just media-created hysteria, and the mandatory vaccination order was supposed to go hand in hand with the interests of pharmaceutical companies. According to Blaha, they want to use the Pandemic Agreement to “legislate this vaccination terror as a mandatory global regime under the auspices of the WHO.” These statements could be an interesting plot for a science fiction story. Unfortunately, however, they come from the mouth of a MEP who is close to the PM of a European country and means them seriously, at least as a tool for further manipulation of his audience. Paradoxically, Blaha presents the Slovak government's non-support for the agreement as a major victory. He prefers not to mention that this was no rejection, but “only” an abstention.

As stated by the Minister of Health Kamil Šaško (Hlas-SD), the Pandemic Agreement does not affect the sovereignty of states. It is not a global regulation, but “a global agreement on how best to jointly face the threat of a possible further pandemic.” It is intended to prevent its occurrence, establishes mechanisms for the exchange of information between states, and encourages states to prepare stocks and capacities to effectively manage a possible emergency situation.

Pfizergate helps disinformation actors undermine EU credibility

Right at the beginning of the reporting period, the so-called Pfizergate case caused a stir on the disinformation scene. On 14 May, the CJEU ruled that the European Commission had acted wrongly in refusing to disclose text messages between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, CEO of the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer. In 2021, during a vaccine shortage, they negotiated the purchase of vaccines worth more than €20 billion via text messages.

The dispute arose after the New York Times asked the European Commission to publish these messages. The Commission rejected the request, claiming that it did not have the messages and that they did not need to be archived. Their existence was later confirmed by Bourla himself, who described them as important for the conclusion of a billion-euro vaccine contract.

The Commission's refusal naturally raised concerns about the lack of transparency of European processes and undermined their credibility. In addition to constructive critics, the disinformation scene also took up the task, artificially linking the issue to problematic narratives or outright lies and propaganda.

The court did not rule on any guilt or punishment. It ruled that the EC, as an institution, does not have the right to keep the content of correspondence between its president and the head of an American corporation secret. “The Commission cannot simply state that it does not have the documents requested, but must provide a credible explanation that allows the public and the court to understand why those documents cannot be found,” wrote the court in its ruling.

The CJEU's decision is a step in the right direction for improving transparency in the EU, but unfortunately it gives problematic actors further ammunition to spread falsehoods and manipulation. That is why we have looked at this issue over the past two weeks using the Gerulata Juno analytical tool. We used it to analyse the most popular posts on Slovak Facebook containing the keywords “Pfizer” or “Leyen”. We excluded posts that did not contain problematic narratives from the list. We then evaluated the posts based on the total number of interactions (the sum of all reactions, comments and shares).

The post with the most interactions belongs to the leader of the far-right movement Republika. In his video, Milan Uhrík claims that Ursula von der Leyen “belongs in an interrogation room for her secret billion-euro mega-deals”. According to Uhrík, the court should have found the EC president guilty. As we wrote above, this is not even within the competence of the CJEU. In its decision, it merely stated that the EC had erred in refusing to share information. Nevertheless, according to the far-right politician, this is supposedly a case of “real extremism”. It is quite clear from the context that the MEP is using this manipulation to try to exonerate himself from his not entirely tolerant views and attitudes (to put it diplomatically). However, the expected barrage came right at the beginning of the article – Uhrík suggests that “all the moralising talk from the EU about “transparency” and “the rule of law” is now officially worth the price of toilet paper.” The Pfizergate scandal will, as expected, be a black mark on the EU's reputation. And Uhrík proves that there are actors who will exploit the scandal for their own political interests, as expected.

In the second post, which was again published by Milan Uhrík, the second main figure of the far-right Republika, his party colleague Milan Mazurek, also appears. Both MEPs blame the Slovak political parties KDH and Progresívne Slovensko (PS) for the Pfizergate scandal. They claim that these parties' MEPs are covering up “Leyen's theft”. However, these parties are not involved in the scandal in any way, and Uhrík is forcing them into the context for purely pragmatic political reasons. He is doing so only because they refused to vote for a motion by the Patriots for Europe (PfE) faction to open a debate in the European Parliament on the Pfizergate scandal. According to Uhrík, this showed the true face of the PS and KDH – in his words, “when tens of billions of euros are being stolen, they cover it up.” Just to be clear, the CJEU has not issued any ruling on theft. In addition to the PS and KDH, more than 300 MEPs opposed the PfE proposal – it cannot be assumed that these people would be against building transparency. Quite the contrary. Rather, they sought to prevent the political exploitation of the issue for further dismantling of European institutions.

The third post was published by Ľuboš Hrica. A well-known face on the disinformation scene, who has been appearing in videos shot in Italy for several years, used the CJEU's decision to call for the preventive arrest of European commissioners. Hrica took a broader view of the issue, accusing the EU of impoverishing ordinary people and bullying them during the pandemic. At least, that is how he describes the vaccination campaigns and anti-pandemic measures. He adds to this with the offensive claim that “these freeloaders have never been interested in health, only profit.” He adds tried-and-tested narratives about pharmaceutical companies, portrays fact-checkers as an ideological police force and once again throws the Green Deal in the bin. The video ends with references to unnecessary aid to Ukraine and a call to “immediately send this bunch of scoundrels to prison as a preventive measure.” Just like that, without a trial, as befits the cognitive capacities of the disinformation scene.

Another post was published by Anna Belousovová. In it, the retired national politician sought to ironically wake up the organisers of the Slovakia is Europe protests, which have been taking place in recent months in response to Slovakia's gradual shift towards Moscow. Belousovová wanted to point out the seriousness of the CJEU's decision and described “Ms Leyen's actions in deciding on billion-euro deals for the purchase of vaccines during Covid” as the greatest threat to trust in the EU. The politician, who just a year ago ran for the EP for the far-right Republika, is a long-time critic of the protests and, above all, a long-time disseminator of pro-Russian propaganda in Slovakia. It is hardly surprising that she sarcastically calls on the organisation Peace for Ukraine, which she describes as the “long arm of the opposition,” to protest against von der Leyen. After all, in a binary worldview where everything is simplified into two opposing camps, it makes sense. But the reality is more complex, and Leyen's misstep does not call into question the relevance of the original protests aimed at emphasising Slovakia's membership in the EU. This is not the case, even though Belousovová is trying to manipulate people into believing it.

The last post in the list was published by Eduard Chmelár. The former advisor to the PM and dubious analyst called Ursula von der Leyen (using the name “Ursula von der Pfizer” in his post) the “best advertisement for anti-European sentiment.” At the beginning of the post, he asks his audience if they can hear “the deafening silence from the opposition, the media and NGOs’.” Chmelár deliberately ignores statements by politicians and media articles on the subject. We have also drawn on some of these above. Why is he doing this? It is easier for him to operate in a black-and-white reality with clearly defined enemies. Naturally, Chmelár used the Pfizergate scandal to question the EU's sanctions policy against Russia – quite manipulatively, for example, he wanted to sweep Leyen's statement, in which she described reopening the tap on Russian oil as a historical mistake, off the table. For Chmelár, Pfizergate probably means a complete loss of legitimacy on other issues as well. It is a pity that he did not apply this logic to his former boss or the Russian regime, which he is trying to help through this proxy issue.

Punch the EU? Why not?

The Pfizergate case was, of course, not the only topic in which disinformation actors felt like fish in water. The aforementioned Milan Mazurek offered his audience another fiery speech in the EP. In a video, he accuses European Commissioners and so-called green progressive fanatics of “making everything more expensive, every single thing in the lives of ordinary hard-working people.” As usual, the far-right MEP attacks the Green Deal and anti-Russian sanctions in particular. He describes the former as bureaucratic nonsense and the latter as a rejection of cheap energy resources. In both cases, he ignores the threats facing Europe, such as climate change and Russian aggression.

In another post, Mazurek focused on migration and further scaremongering with xenophobic rhetoric. Mazurek specifically disliked an exhibition in the EP building that highlighted the need to build safe routes for migrants from Africa and Asia. The far-right MEP is gradually ceasing to watch his language – he ironically expresses the campaign's motive as “so that the poor illegal immigrants don't die on illegal boat trips!” In addition to apparently not valuing human life, he questions migrants' hopes for a better future in the video and says that this is not compatible with how Europe works. He goes on to paint a bleak picture of the situation in Slovakia and presents helping migrants as forgetting about European citizens. He ends his post with the words: “This is perverted, twisted, and we will never support this in our lives.”

After a short pause, Milan Uhrík naturally joined in the rant about minorities, focusing his attention on the upcoming Pride march in Brussels (which took place on 16 May 2025). Like Mazurek, he tried to maliciously accuse the EU of solving “fictitious problems of non-existent or fictitious pseudo-minorities” instead of the “real” problems of European citizens. This is how he described the LGBTI+ community, which, according to Uhrík, is trying to gain support and advantages by “drawing attention to their sexual orientation.” It is unclear what these advantages are, but building hatred towards minorities just to score political points has never been based on logic or evidence.

Last but not least, the soap opera between PM Robert Fico and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas continued. We covered their mutual comments in our previous report. This time, they met at a meeting of the European Political Community in Tirana. According to the PM, they were supposed to clear up their previous exchange of views at the bilateral meeting. Fico even said that he offered Kallas to “provide much more information about” where he's travelling and what those trips are about. “I can even imagine that I could deliver certain European messages on these trips,” Fico said. However, it would not be the Slovak PM if he did not conclude the video with words of disagreement with the so-called new iron curtain that the EU is allegedly building against Russia. He thus repeated the narrative in which he blames Brussels, not Moscow, for the growing tensions.

Project Infosecurity.sk organized by Adapt Institute, which is supported by the Prague office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, continuously monitors the activities of both Slovak and foreign disinformation actors, but focuses mainly on the former. The project activities are built upon daily monitoring of emerging disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories in the online information space. This approach allows the analysts to identify disinformation posts and narratives that resonated with the public the most, as well as to find out where they originated, and how they spread and evolved on social media. The report takes the form of a bi-weekly summary of arising trends in the spread of malicious information content online. Based on that, Infosecurity.sk can inform the public about emerging and current trends in the field of disinformation, manipulation, and propaganda.