Slovenia’s president denies Russia ties after car crash involving pal with alleged links to Moscow

LJUBLJANA - Slovenian president Natasa Pirc Musar has denied links with Russian intelligence amid political controversy after she was involved in a traffic accident alongside a friend with alleged ties to Moscow.

“We strongly deny that the president collaborates with Russian intelligence networks,” Pirc Musar’s office said in a statement on Aug 18.

Pirc Musar was hospitalised with a broken collarbone after the accident in late July, in which her official car was also carrying “two passengers who are friends of the president”, according to her office.

Local media reported that one of the passengers was Viktorija Krivolucka, a longtime friend of Pirc Musar who is originally from Russia and obtained Slovenian nationality in 2016.

Krivolucka and Pirc Musar have been friends for years and visited Russia together several times before Pirc Musar became president in 2022, the reports said.

On Aug 17, Slovenian daily Dnevnik and Austrian news agency APA published a report alleging that Krivolucka had close ties with Roman Jeglic, a disgraced former Slovenian intelligence official who fled to Russia in the mid-1990s.

In a statement sent to the private POP TV channel, Krivolucka confirmed she had lived with Jeglic in Russia for “several years” after he left Slovenia, but said she had not been in touch with him for 15 years.

The ruling conservative Slovenian Democratic Party has called on the government to ban Pirc Musar from access to intelligence reports, claiming she may be linked to Russian intelligence networks.

The president’s office on Aug 18 denied that Krivolucka had any links to Russian intelligence and insisted she would have been vetted before being granted Slovenian citizenship.

Pirc Musar was elected president as an independent candidate in 2022 and is generally seen as liberal and pro-European, emphasising human rights, transparency and the rule of law.

She has often criticised Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. AFP