I'm John that's with my colleague Judy Dempsey of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

She's in Berlin. She keeps Strategic, a newsletter I recommend highly because the Europeans

are debating issues that the US is involved in.

Right now we're a little self-centered about our election cycle, but we'll return to the world of complications.

And the big complication over this last week, Robert Fizzo, the Prime Minister of

Slovakia, identified as center Right, was shot, we're told, and wounded badly

by a Slovakia national, an elderly Slovakia national, and we're also told in news reporting this is just what the news says

that this man had some opinion of Ukraine that might have driven his decision

making there are other allegations saying that there's more than one person involved.

Robert Fizzo is stable and the condition is positive.

Is this a blow to the European Union a vote Judy because the right left

was emerging as an issue to be determined in the vote we have a couple of minutes.

But Robert Fito is no center left or center right he's a actually reign in non-governmental organizations.

And under his watch several years ago,

the leading investigative journalist was actually murdered.

So there's an awful lot of polarisation in Slovakia,

an awful lot of hatred, an awful lot of elements of. and is anti-supporting Ukraine, he's pro-Russia, he's everything that goes against the whole idea of how

the European Union wants to support Ukraine.

I mean, this is, and his, this assassination attempt represents the appalling polarization of a small country in the middle of Europe and a small country which really hasn't overcome the divisions and make this country stable and totally

integrate this into the European idea. I recall when there was a vote in Slovakia not too many

months ago.

I didn't have any understanding of what the vote meant,

...