BANSKA BYSTRICA, Slovakia (AFP) — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s condition has stabilized but was still “very serious,” his deputy said Thursday, a day after Fico was shot multiple times in an attack the government in Bratislava decried as “political assault.”

Surgeons spent hours in the operating theater overnight, battling to save the 59-year-old leader after the attack, which has been condemned around the world.

The director of the Banska Bystrica hospital, where the Slovak premier was transported after sustaining gunshot wounds, said Fico underwent a “five-hour surgery carried out by two teams.”

“He will stay at the intensive care unit,” Miriam Lapunikova said.

Deputy prime minister Robert Kalinak told reporters gathered at the hospital where the Slovak premier was being treated that the injuries are complicated.

On Wednesday evening, another Fico deputy, Tomas Taraba, told the BBC he believed the leader’s hospital procedure had gone well.

“I guess in the end he will survive,” Taraba said. “He’s not in a life-threatening situation at this moment.”

Footage of events just after the shooting showed security agents grabbing a wounded Fico from the ground and hustling him into a black car. Other police handcuffed a man on the pavement nearby.

Police detained a suspect at the site of the attack in Handlova, President Zuzana Caputova told reporters.

Media reported that the suspected gunman was a 71-year-old writer, but police have not named any suspects.

The alleged suspect’s son told Slovak news site aktuality.sk he had “absolutely no idea what father was thinking, what he was planning, why it happened.”

In a video by the shooter eight years ago posted online, he is shown saying, “The world is full of violence and weapons. People seem to be going crazy.”

In the video, he also said that he had founded a “Movement Against Violence” in Levice.

The movement, which also has its Facebook page, defines itself as “an emerging political party whose goal is to prevent the spread of violence in society. To prevent war in Europe and the spread of hatred.”

Since returning to office last October, Fico has made a string of remarks that have soured ties between Slovakia and neighboring Ukraine.

He has questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty and called for a compromise with Russia, which invaded in 2022.

After he was elected, Slovakia stopped sending weapons to Ukraine.