Ukraine faces decisive months ahead as key allies gear up for crunch elections. While early presidential campaigning in the US and a looming general election in Poland will grab the international headlines, a snap election in Slovakia on 30 September may prove every bit as consequential. 

With Robert Fico — Slovakia’s former prime minister and one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Ukrainian war effort — poised to win the vote, a change of government in Bratislava could have a profound effect on EU policymaking. Fico has promised that if his party makes it into government “we will not send a single bullet to Ukraine,” proudly proclaiming that “I allow myself to have a different opinion to that of the United States” on the war.  

Fico has also claimed on the campaign trail that “war always comes from the West and peace from the East,” and that “what is happening today is unnecessary killing, it is the emptying of warehouses to force countries to buy more American weapons.” Such statements have resulted in him being blacklisted by Kyiv as a spreader of Russian propaganda.  

Yet the former prime minister spearheads a new brand of Left-wing, anti-American populism that has become a powerful force in Central Europe since the war began. Perceptions that “the Americans occupy us” — as one MP in Fico’s Smer party evocatively put it — are shared with a similar groundswell of anti-Western opinion in the neighbouring Czech Republic.  

Yet Smer has been handed a chance to gain power thanks to the chaos which has engulfed Slovakia’s pro-EU, pro-Western forces. Personal grievances coupled with serious policy errors tore apart a four-party coalition formed after elections in 2020, leaving Fico to capitalise on heightened mistrust in establishment politics. Smer is expected to become the nation’s largest party after this month’s election, with an anticipated 20% of the vote.  

Whatever the specific makeup of the new government, if Smer is the largest party it will likely pursue a foreign policy similar to that of Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary. A halt to until-now generous Slovak arms shipments to Ukraine is Fico’s central electoral pledge, while the arrival on the scene of another Orbán-style government prepared to obstruct EU aid efforts for Ukraine would create a serious headache. That is particularly the case as Brussels struggles to win support for both short and long-term war funding commitments. 

Victory for Fico would also amplify Orbán’s scepticism about the overall Western narrative on Ukraine — a scepticism which the Hungarian Prime Minister recently conveyed to Western conservatives during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Orbán portrayed Ukraine’s attempts to win back the territories taken by Russia as ultimately hopeless and claimed that Donald Trump’s promise to end the war quickly makes him “the man who can save the Western world”. 

Like Trump in America and Orbán in Europe, Fico is hated with a passion by establishment forces. But in Slovakia, the pro-Western establishment itself has become so mistrusted that power may soon pass to a man intent on shattering what’s left of European unity on Ukraine. 

“I don’t fall out with anybody,” Nigel Farage once said. “They fall out with me.” The pattern has served him well enough so far: usually, he comes out on top. Who now remembers Ukip founder Alan Sked, or Brexit Party founder Catherine Blaiklock? Now, however, Farage is locked in a struggle which might prove more difficult to win. The weekend marked the revival of the Reform UK leader’s spat with Elon Musk, after the tech billionaire reiterated his support for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain. The Reform UK leader responded by suggesting Musk was “splitting the Right”.

It was one thing to have to deal with Lowe and Ben Habib when they appeared to the world as petty, disgruntled nobodies. It is quite another to deal with a fully-fledged political party, polling at 7% in the crucial Makerfield by-election, which has the backing of the world’s richest man.

The Farage–Musk spat has been rumbling on now for more than a year. In late 2024, it looked like Musk might donate a large sum to Reform, and the party’s opponents prepared accordingly. Keir Starmer moved to ban foreign political donations; Kemi Badenoch called upon her party’s backers to raise an equivalent amount; Ed Davey demagogued against Musk, suggesting even that his tweets warranted criminal sanction. However, their fears of a Musk-backed Reform never materialized. The X owner ultimately thought that Farage “doesn’t have what it takes”; Farage claims that Musk made his donation subject to conditions which he could not, in good conscience, accept. The bad blood has now only got worse. Musk has thrown his weight behind Reform’s new Right-wing challenger, which may have significant political repercussions.

Losing in Makerfield — two-thirds Leave, 97% white – would take the wind out of Reform’s sails. The party might try to pin such a loss and its consequences on Musk and Lowe; in fact, it might even help Reform distance itself from Musk, who remains unpopular in Britain. But a Restore spoiler effect in Makerfield would still do little to alleviate the impression that Farage’s tendency to fall out with people, or for people to fall out with him, is a serious liability. Likewise, it would suggest that Reform’s grip on the Right — even if the Conservative Party’s decline is terminal — is far from guaranteed.

If Restore does have a strong presence on the ground in Makerfield, that owes something to its strong presence in the online sphere. By denigrating Farage and promoting Lowe, Musk is a big part of this. It’s a good example of how he has brought about a sharp lurch to the Right on X, which is naturally to Restore’s benefit. Some of the most dogged pro-Restore accounts would never have been allowed on ancien régime Twitter.

The radical Right on this corner of social media has become fanatically anti-Farage, perceiving him as soft and accusing him of being part of the “uniparty” he likes to rail against. They may even — here, in any case, is a reasonable inference to draw from their activity in Makerfield — think Farage is worse than Andy Burnham. There is a natural tendency on social media of political one-upmanship, of people prizing ideological purity above all; on the Right, this now seems to mean repudiating Farage. If Burnham wins in Makerfield, he might therefore have Elon Musk to thank.

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Samuel Rubinstein is a writer and historian.

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