Richard Sulík

The ride was always likely to be bumpy given the combative characters of OLaNO leader Igor Matovic and Richard Sulik of the conservative Freedom & Solidarity (SaS) party. But amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the fact the coalition has lasted this long is already something of a surprise to many.

Things had all seemed so different a year ago.

Matovic insisted in a Facebook post that the Russian jab, yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is of high quality and the 2 million doses that are expected to be delivered by the end of June, the taking of which will be entirely "voluntary", can speed up the country's troubled vaccination program by 40%.

"The crisis is very real and someone will have to take responsibility for it. At this point, it's hard to predict whether the government will still hold on to its constitutional majority in three months' time," political commentator Peter Tkacenko told BIRN.