Fico after meeting with Trump. “He rides on a white horse and we ride on donkeys”
When the agreement, also known as DCA (short for Defense Cooperation Agreement), was signed in 2022, for the then opposition Smer it was an act of betrayal. Politicians of this party threatened people that thanks to this agreement, the Americans would bring nuclear weapons to Slovakia.
Fico promised to initiate a referendum “on the termination of this treasonous agreement” and also declared that the DCA should be repealed. After the elections, nothing came of it. The new Minister of Defense, Robert Kaliniak, wanted to at least modify the agreement, but to this day even this has not happened.
Many coalition voters feel they have been deceived. Smer no longer discusses the topic of the defense agreement, but from time to time the head of the SNS party, Andrej Danko, speaks up and reminds the prime minister of what he promised before the elections.
Before leaving for the US (he met with Trump on January 17, 2026), Fico stated that he would talk to President Trump about DCA. “This will certainly be one of the topics I want to talk about with the American president,” he said in the TA3 TV program “In Politics.” However, it is still not certain whether he finally did it.
“We are riding next to Trump, he is on a white horse and we are on donkeys”
We sent official inquiries, collected statements from several top coalition officials, and spoke informally with a senior party official, Smer, to find out whether Fico actually raised the topic of the defense deal during his meeting with Trump.
The press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs referred our questions to a government office. He, in turn, gave no answer. Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar also went to Trump with Fico and, after returning from the United States, immediately spoke to the pro-Russian radio station Infowojna.
One of the listeners asked Blanar whether there was electoral fraud on Smer's part in the DCA case and when something would finally happen with this deal. Even after returning from the United States, the minister was unable to provide a direct answer and never once mentioned that Fico negotiated a deal with Trump. Blanar only repeated that the agreement was bad and that Kaliniak was working to improve some of its provisions.
Andrej Danko, who repeatedly publicly asked Fico whether he asked Trump when the Americans would leave Slovakia, was also unable to provide more information to voters. “The answer was: 'we're going next to him [Trumpa]”He is on a white horse and we are on donkeys,” Danko said in the Saturday Dialogues program of Slovak Radio.
The contract remains
An important representative of the Smer party, who is informed about Fico's trip to the US, also avoided directly answering Aktuality's question whether the conversation with Trump concerned DCA. According to him, President Trump and the Slovak Prime Minister talked a lot about defense in general.
A source from Smer says negotiations on the defense deal between the two sides are taking place mainly in Germany and behind the cameras. It is certain that the contract will not be terminated and according to our information, its content will probably not change.
Negotiations with the Americans should lead to the approval of some kind of additions to the agreement, which would interpret its individual provisions. However, this has not yet been finally agreed.
The contract has already been signed with the so-called an interpretative clause pushed through by President Zuzana Czaputova. This clause specifies how Slovakia should understand and apply individual provisions of the agreement in order to avoid interpretations that go beyond the framework of state sovereignty. It emphasizes, for example, that the agreement does not allow the deployment of nuclear weapons on our territory.
Shortly after the elections, Defense Minister Robert Kaliniak, responsible for the DCA negotiations, wanted to introduce amendments to the agreement. Kaliniak still believes he is getting closer to his goal. — We are discussing individual conditions, the process is very long, now that the new administration has taken power [w Białym Domu] has gained momentum again and we believe that in the near future we will be able to present the results of our negotiations on the implementation of this agreement, he said.
