Slovenia’s President Nataša Pirc Musar has faced growing political scrutiny over her long-standing friendship with a Russian-born Slovenian citizen whose former partner, a senior officer in the country’s first intelligence service, later settled in Russia.
The controversy centres on Viktorija Krivolucka, a long-time friend of Pirc Musar who was travelling with the president when her official vehicle was involved in a road accident on July 31. The crash in the Kastelec tunnel on the Primorska motorway left the president with a broken collarbone and one of her two passengers seriously injured.
An investigation by Slovenian newspaper Dnevnik and Austria’s APA news agency, published on August 17, found that Krivolucka and Roman Jeglič, a former senior Slovenian intelligence officer, had been registered at the same flat in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in 2009.
Krivolucka has confirmed that she and Jeglič were a couple. She told POP TV she had not known of his past at the time and had had no contact with him for at least 15 years.
Jeglič served between 1991 and 1993 as deputy director of Slovenia’s first post-independence intelligence body, the Security-Information Service (VIS), the predecessor of today’s agency.
His name carries additional political weight. As head of the crime-suppression unit of the Ljubljana police he signed the 1988 criminal complaint that led to the arrest of Janez Janša, now Prime Minister, in the JBTZ affair.
Dnevnik and APA reported that Pirc Musar appeared on passenger lists alongside Krivolucka at least seven times from 2015. Her final reported visit was to Moscow for New Year 2022, less than two months before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Jeglič also has a contested financial history. Slovenian media have linked him to the Catch the Cash pyramid scheme, which drew in about 120,000 people around 1992 and absorbed an estimated 105 million German marks (€54 million).
Miha Brejc, who ran VIS at the time, told POP TV that Jeglič had come to him asking that the service become involved in the scheme and that he had thrown him out of his office. Jeglič left for Russia in the mid-1990s and largely disappeared from public view.
Dnevnik acknowledged that the disclosed databases contain no direct evidence linking Jeglič to Russian intelligence. It noted that unusually little information about him appears in them and that he appears to hold Russian citizenship.
The findings have prompted Žan Mahnič, an MP for the governing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), to ask the Government that SOVA, military intelligence and other services stop sending intelligence and security reports to the president and her office.
Mahnič has argued that the publicly reported connections between people in the president’s private circle and Russia warrant a reassessment of her access to sensitive information.
Pirc Musar’s office has rejected the allegations. It has denied that the president collaborates with a Russian spy network and said she does not know Jeglič and has never met him.
The office also said that Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency, SOVA, had not informed it of any security concerns regarding Krivolucka, and that it therefore concluded no such risks existed.
SOVA has confirmed that it carried out a security check on Krivolucka in 2016, when she obtained Slovenian citizenship, and that no security-relevant irregularities were identified. It said it had received no further information since that would have changed that assessment.
Rajko Kozmelj, a former SOVA director, said the checks should be repeated because the presidency makes Pirc Musar a target for foreign services.
The affair has widened beyond the president’s personal circle. Robert Golob, who led the Government until May 22 and now heads the largest opposition party, Freedom Movement, has called on Janša to convene the National Security Council.
Golob said no serious politician could accuse anyone of espionage lightly, and that questions of national security should be settled by the competent institutions rather than through political exchanges.
The parliamentary commission for the supervision of intelligence and security services, KNOVS, has separately called an urgent session at which SOVA is expected to brief MPs on possible Russian and Israeli influence.
Jeglič told POP TV on August 18 that he was in Slovenia and living in Bohinj, northwest Slovenia, and that everything would fall into place. He has not responded to subsequent calls from the broadcaster.
There is no publicly established evidence that Pirc Musar has collaborated with Russian intelligence, and neither SOVA nor the president’s office has made such a claim. The allegations concern the background and relationships of people in her private circle.
The Israeli strand refers to the Black Cube affair. SOVA concluded in March that the Israeli private intelligence firm had sought to influence the electoral process before the March 22 parliamentary election.
Golob, then Prime Minister, accused foreign services of interference, while Janša denied any role and described the findings as an abuse of State institutions. Freedom Movement won the most votes, though Janša assembled a governing coalition and took office on May 22.
Slovenia is gripped by allegations of foreign election interference and corruption just days before its parliamentary polls on March 22.https://t.co/c3EvZhWc6j
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) March 17, 2026
