Slovakia, which was reeling on Wednesday after an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico, is a relatively young country whose history is closely intertwined with that of its Central European neighbors.
Slovakia is one of two nations that emerged from the former Czechoslovakia during the collapse of the Soviet Union in the closing years of the 20th century.
Czechoslovakia was a multi-ethnic nation created at the end of World War I, which was torn apart by the Nazis and endured more than four decades of communist rule. But during the fall of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as independence movements gained momentum across the Soviet Union, a series of largely peaceful protests called the Velvet Revolution first led Czechoslovakia to independence and then to a split, also known as the 'Velvet Revolution'. Velvet separationleaving two countries: the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
After several years of economic and political turmoil following its independence, Slovakia joined the European Union and NATO in 2004, and adopted the euro in 2009. national identitySome tensions remained with the Czech Republic richer and bigger neighborwhich has roughly twice the population of Slovakia (five million).
Like much of Europe, Slovakia has been deeply polarized over the past decade. So was Mr. Fico, who has been a leading politician in the country since independence forced to resign from office in 2018, amid sweeping protests over the murder of a journalist investigating government corruption.
He was re-elected last fall take a pro-Russian campaign position that benefited from Slovakia's historical Russian sympathies.