A European Union leader has stirred up tensions with fellow member states after he made a surprise trip to Moscow for a friendly meeting with President Putin.
Slovakia is a member of the European Union and NATO, but that didn’t stop Prime Minister Robert Fico from seemingly going against both organisations’ support for Ukraine by meeting the Russian war leader.
Mr Fico, 60, has been Prime Minister of Slovakia, a former constituent country of Czechoslovakia, three times in the past 20 years, ruling it for more than a decade.
Slovakia has some ethnic and cultural ties to Russia, but the country is also beholden to Moscow’s energy supplies, with Russian crude oil, gas and nuclear fuel dominating the nation’s market.
Despite the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 being denounced widely by both the EU and NATO, Prime Minister Fico sensationally claimed this week that Putin had been “wrongly demonised” by the West.
Posting on his Facebook page, Mr Fico said his visit to Moscow was a reaction towards Ukraine previously saying Russian gas would not transit in the future through its territory towards Slovakia as a pre-war five-year agreement between Mr Fico’s country and Moscow on energy comes to a close in days.
Writing in a statement Mr Fico repeatedly criticised Ukraine, saying: “My meeting today was a reaction to Ukrainian President Zelensky, who answered my personal question on Thursday, said he is against any transit of gas through Ukraine to our territory.
“The Ukrainian president is also in favour of sanctions against the Russian nuclear program. With such attitudes, Slovakia financially damages and endangers the production of electricity in nuclear power plants in Slovakia, which is unacceptable.”
Mr Fico added that he had a “long conversation with Putin” and “exchanged views on the military situation in Ukraine”. The Slovakian PM also said the pair discussed “the possibilities of an early peaceful end of the war”.
Slovakia last month signed a short-term pilot contract to buy natural gas from Azerbaijan, as it prepares for a possible halt to Russian supplies through Ukraine. Earlier this year, it struck a deal to import US liquefied natural gas through a pipeline from Poland.
The country can also receive gas through Austrian, Hungarian and Czech networks, enabling imports from Germany among other potential suppliers.
Visits and phone calls from European leaders to Putin have been rare since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, although Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Russia in July, and Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer met with the Russian leader just weeks into the full-scale war. Both trips drew condemnation from Kyiv and European leaders.
Mr Fico’s views on Russia’s war on Ukraine differ sharply from most other European leaders. The Slovakian PM returned to power last year after his leftist party Smer (Direction) won parliamentary elections on a pro-Russia and anti-American platform. Since then, he has lashed out at EU sanctions on Russia and vowed to block Ukraine from joining NATO.
In May this year, Mr Fico was shot and injured in an assassination attempt in the central Slovak town of Handlová.
