Fitzo shamed schoolboy with Ukrainian ribbon who did not shake hands with Slovak president
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- Fitzo shamed schoolboy with Ukrainian ribbon who did not shake hands with Slovak president
A schoolboy Simon Omanik with a ribbon in the colors of the Ukrainian flag on 13 January refused to shake hands with Slovak President Peter Pellegrini during the presentation of awards to Olympic winners. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fitzo on January 15 criticized the young man's behavior.
The event was held at the presidential palace in Bratislava. The high school student achieved an award in the international round of the math Olympiad, writes Tyzden.sk.
Pellegrini, for his part, said he respected the student's gesture, the publication reported. Fitzo expressed surprise at the president's words.
According to him, the refusal should be an example of disrespect.
"If the Minister of Education organized such an event and one of the excellent students did not shake my hand as one of the three first leaders of the state, first, I would ask him if he has a nursery. Secondly, what his parents taught him. Thirdly, I would take away his award and send him where he belongs, in front of all the media," Fitzo wrote in the social network Facebook (owned by the recognized extremist company Meta, its activities are banned in Russia).
Earlier, on January 14, the leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, Michal Šimečka, said that the Slovak opposition would submit a motion of no confidence in the government of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to parliament. According to the Slovak edition of Aktuality.sk, the entire opposition represented in the state parliament united in the issue of resignation. It was noted that the subject of criticism was Fitzo's trip to Moscow, as well as his public statements, "violating the country's foreign policy course."
On January 13, vice-speaker of the Slovak parliament Andrei Danko, who is in Moscow, said at a meeting with the chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin that the country respects Russia and wants to form relations with it on the basis of trust. Before that, on December 25, 2024, it was reported that Slovakia will start collecting signatures for the country's withdrawal from the European Union (EU) and NATO in the first quarter of 2025.
Fitzo visited Moscow on December 22 last year, on that day he had talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. The Slovak politician called his visit to Russia a reaction to the statement of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (his term expired on May 20, 2024) about the termination of Russian gas transit to Europe. The Ukrainian conflict was one of the topics of the meeting.
