Bratislava: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s life is not in danger after an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday.
Fico has been in the hospital since a gunman shot him four times, including in the stomach, on Wednesday.
The Slovak prime minister underwent a five-hour operation on Wednesday and another operation on Friday at a hospital in the city center of Banska Bystrica.
“With a positive prognosis, we can consider his condition stable,” Kalinak said outside the hospital, adding, “We are all relieved now.”
Kalinak said Fico will stay in Banska Bystrica for now.
The gunman, identified by Slovak media as the 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, was charged with attempted murder and remanded in custody by a special criminal court on Saturday.
Fico walked as his supporters greeted him after a government meeting in the central mountain town of Handlowa.
Kalinak previously said Fico had four gunshot wounds, two minor, one medium and one serious.
Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said that one of the bullets “would have hit the prime minister in the chest if it had been a few centimeters higher.”
Fico, 59, took office in October after his centrist populist Smer party won general elections.
He is serving a fourth term as prime minister after a peace campaign between Russia and Slovakia’s neighbor, Ukraine, and a government proposal to end military aid to Kiev.
Kalinak said the government will continue without Fico “in accordance with the agenda set,” including two meetings next week.
The suicide attempt shocked the EU and NATO member states with a population of 5.4 million.
