The Ukrainian leader needs to stop asking other people for money, Slovakia’s Robert Fico has said
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.
“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.
Slovakia exported 2.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity to Ukraine in the first 11 months of 2024, according to data from the Slovak grid operator.
“Neither Slovakia nor the EU is at war, we have no reason to tolerate Zelensky’s adventures, especially looking at the aid Slovakia and the EU are providing to Ukraine,” Fico said in a video address posted on Facebook on Wednesday.
Despite receiving assurances from Moscow that Slovakia would continue to receive Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline, Fico said that he would travel to Brussels to meet with Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen “to wake him up from his sweet sleep, because we have a ‘bloody’ serious problem.”
Fico and Jorgensen met on Thursday to discuss the effect of the gas cutoff on energy prices, and agreed to hold further consultations.
