Putin’s New Friend in the Heart of Europe

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico on July 8, 2008 in Bratislava. (Photo credit Samuel Kubani/AFP via Getty Images)
THE BULWARK | Published January 13, 2025

Is Slovakia’s prime minister a Russian stooge?

HAS VLADIMIR PUTIN QUIETLY ACQUIRED a new imperial possession in the heart of Europe, embedded within the EU and NATO? The suggestion may sound hyperbolic, but reports from Bratislava are becoming stranger by the day.

Consider this: Slovakia’s Prime Minister, Robert Fico, visited Vladimir Putin in Moscow on December 23, ostensibly to make the case for a continued Russian supply of natural gas to Slovakia. It is unclear what, if anything, he negotiated at the meeting because, in a break with normal practice, he was not accompanied by Slovak diplomats.

More oddly, it remains unclear how he traveled to Moscow, as there is no record of government planes making the trip. His whereabouts for twelve days during the holiday season are equally opaque. Fico’s new year’s video greeting, in which he lashed out against Ukraine and made threats against Ukrainian refugees living in Slovakia, was geolocated to a $6,000-a-night suite at a luxury hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Fico has refused to explain what brought him to Vietnam, what his travel arrangements were, or who paid for his lavish accommodations. In 2017, during a previous stint as prime minister, a Slovak government plane was lent to Vietnamese authorities to essentially kidnap Trinh Xuan Thanh, a Vietnamese party official and businessman who had been seeking asylum in Germany, back to Vietnam.

More importantly, since his return, Fico has stepped up in his rhetorical offensive against Ukraine, hinting at stopping Slovakia’s humanitarian assistance to Ukraine (the country no longer provides military aid) and at using Slovakia’s veto in the European Council, presumably to derail EU-level initiatives to help Ukraine, to sanction Russia, or to continue Ukraine’s EU integration.

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SOURCE: www.thebulwark.com
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/putin-new-friend-heart-europe-slovakia-robert-fico


RELATED: Slovakia’s PM: Zelensky a beggar and blackmailer

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has lashed out at Vladimir Zelensky, declaring that the Ukrainian leader’s “begging and blackmailing” needs “to stop.” Relations between Bratislava and Kiev soured when Ukraine cut off the flow of Russian gas earlier this month.

SHARGH DAILY | Published January 13, 2025

ISNA – “I’m not here to hold hands with Zelensky, and I’ll admit, I’m sick of him sometimes,” Fico said at a meeting of the Slovak parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Friday.

“He roams Europe begging and blackmailing, asking others for money,” Fico continued, adding: “This needs to stop.”

Fico has long been a critic of Western aid to Kiev, arguing that Ukraine cannot hope to defeat Russia on the battlefield and must instead seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Immediately after taking office in 2023, Fico halted military aid to Ukraine and vowed to veto the country’s potential accession to NATO.

Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban have both angered Zelensky by defying the EU consensus and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During a meeting in Moscow last month, Fico offered to host peace talks in Slovakia, an offer that Putin said he is “not against.”

With relations already strained, Ukraine deepened its spat with Slovakia when it refused to extend its transit contract with Russia’s Gazprom beyond the end of 2024, effectively cutting off the flow of Russian natural gas to some EU countries, namely Austria, Italy, and Slovakia. Landlocked Slovakia depends on Russian gas to meet about 60% of its demand.

Fico has demanded compensation from Kiev, and has vowed to retaliate, potentially by cutting off electricity supplies and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

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SOURCE: www.sharghdaily.com

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