Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has opened another crack in Western isolation for Russian Vladimir Putin. The leader, who along with the Hungarian Viktor Orbán is the closest European partner to the Kremlin – although he is much less explicit than the national populist from Budapest – met with Putin in Moscow on Sunday afternoon. Fico went to Moscow after a dispute with the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he accused of harming Slovakia and putting the country’s security at risk by refusing to expand the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine.
Putin received the Slovak in the Kremlin with a strong handshake. They both talked in a room with two armchairs around a small table. Nothing to do with the enormous room and the also enormous table behind which, before launching the war against Ukraine, he placed the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Fico has assured that he spoke with Putin not only about the energy agreements but also about “normalizing bilateral relations” between Slovakia and Russia, the military situation in Ukraine and “the possibilities of a soon peaceful end to the conflict,” as he has published in his social networks. The Slovak opposition has already attacked Fico for his trip to Moscow, which in a Brussels closed for the Christmas holidays, has not yet received a response.
The visit of the Slovak prime minister – who came to power in October 2023, but who has a history similar to Russia – to Moscow marks his first meeting with the Russian autocrat in eight years and represents an unusual appointment by a foreign leader to Russia. Following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Western leaders have isolated Putin. Meanwhile, Russia continues the large-scale war on Ukraine and has also fueled its hybrid war against Europe, with an increase in cyberattacks, sabotage and attempts at electoral interference. But the Russian autocrat has allies or at least like-minded partners in the European Union.
In July, Orbán unleashed harsh criticism from his European partners after meeting with Putin in the Moscow Kremlin, in a meeting in which they spoke about Ukraine and on a trip that the Hungarian – who also holds the presidency of the EU Council this semester — defined as a “peace mission,” which later took him to Beijing to see Xi Jinping and Florida to talk with Republican Donald Trump. In November, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke by phone with the Russian autocrat in a gesture that also received criticism, including from Poland.
Trump – who will take office as president of the United States on January 20 and has promised to end the war against Ukraine launched by Russia almost three years ago – has also opened the door to possible contact with the Russian. “President Putin has said he wants to meet with me as soon as possible,” the Republican said Sunday. “So we will have to wait for that, but we have to end this war,” Trump stressed. Putin and Fico held “detailed conversations” about energy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov explained this Monday. On Thursday, the Slovak had a bitter argument with Zelensky during the European Council meeting in Brussels over the Russian gas transit contracts through Ukraine, which expire at the end of the year and which the Ukrainian leader has refused to renew, according to community sources.
Slovakia assures that it depends on this energy flow, but kyiv affirms that it is not opposed to the passage of gas to that eastern country (and others), only to the transit of Russian gas. Zelensky accused Fico of pocketing around 500 million euros a year by trading cheaper Russian gas. “It is a bit embarrassing to talk about money when we are losing people,” the Ukrainian leader claimed during a press conference in the community capital.
Slovakia and Hungary already went to the community institutions against Ukraine last August and assured that kyiv’s sanctions against the Russian oil company Lukoil were harming the supply that reaches them through an oil pipeline that crosses the invaded country. Brussels then concluded that there was no “immediate risk to the security of supply” and noted that other member states have done everything possible to diversify their energy sources and dispense with the hydrocarbons that the Kremlin has used for decades as a lever of pressure. Something similar happens with gas. Last October, the then energy commissioner, Kadri Simson, stressed that the EU was ready to do without Russian fuel. “I will be clear: it is not necessary, and if Member States prefer to continue importing it, going even beyond the contracted capacity or signing new agreements, they will be making a dangerous political decision,” she said.
