Is Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala being ignored by foreign delegations compared to his Slovakian counterpart Robert Fico? No, that's not true: Government press releases and official posts on social media show that both heads of government have received foreign representatives in the capitals of their countries.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on TikTok on January 21, 2024. The text (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff) was:
Delegations from Washington, Brussels, and Beijing arrived [to meet] Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico three months after he took office. He is also holding important negotiations with the Russian ambassador. Not even a delegation from [the city of] Pisek is visiting our Prime Minister Fiala.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Jan 29 12:41:52 2024 UTC)
Since taking office on October 25, 2023, Slovakian Prime Minister Fico has received the Russian and American ambassadors in the Slovakian capital Bratislava on November 30, 2023, according to a government press release (archived here).
According to a December 11, 2023, post on the prime minister's official Facebook page (archived here), Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Deng Li visited Fico in Bratislava ahead of his planned trip to China in the spring of 2024. On January 13, 2024, Fico met with two U.S. senators, Chris Coons and Mike Rounds, in Bratislava, according to a report by the Slovak news agency TASR (archived here) and a press release issued by Coons' office (archived here).
According to transcripts of press conferences published on the Czech government's website, Fiala, in office since November 28, 2021, has received the following leaders in Prague in 2023: Nikol Pashinyan, the prime minister of Armenia (May 4, 2023, archived here); Georgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy (May 10, 2023, archived here); Ludovit Odor, the prime minister of Slovakia (July 4, 2023, archived here); Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine (July 7, 2023, archived here); Han Duck-soo, the prime minister of South Korea (September 12, 2023, archived here); Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission (September 26, 2023, archived here); Fico (November 24, 2023, archived here), and Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister of Ethiopia (November 28, 2023, archived here).
