Those with sound minds must unite against “collective madness” in the EU, the deputy head of Slovakia’s ruling Smer party has said
Bratislava could support Budapest’s idea to form an anti-Ukraine bloc within the EU, Lubos Blaha, the deputy leader of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer Party, has said.
Earlier this week, a senior political adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban suggested that Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic could team up to align their stances ahead of European Council meetings. A “Ukraine-skeptic” alliance in the EU “will come – and be more and more visible,” Balazs Orban, told Politico.
Unlike most other EU nations, Hungary and Slovakia refused to send military aid to Kiev, instead calling for a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict and maintaining ties with Russia. A similar stance had been voiced by Andrej Babis, whose ANO party won the Czech parliamentary election last month.
Blaha told Izvestia on Saturday, that “joint actions by those who still have a sound mind in Europe are not only possible, but also probable. Despite the fact that Europe is once again… gripped by a collective madness that is leading us all to war, decline and chaos.”
The policies of the EU leadership in Brussels are “harmful and anti-European,” so that Bratislava, Budapest, and Prague must defend themselves together, he argued.
The deputy head of the Smer party, which is part of the Slovak ruling coalition, noted that the positions of the three states on the Ukraine conflict are very close, despite differences on other foreign policy issues.
He warned that the “anti-Russian military hysteria” could end in disaster for the EU as “Russia cannot be defeated without unleashing a nuclear war.”
Blaha added that the sanctions against Moscow have failed and described the EU’s plan to phase out Russian energy by 2028 as “chopping down a branch on which you are sitting.”
When asked about a possible Slovak, Hungarian, and Czech alliance earlier this week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that – considering the “crazy Russophobia” in the West – Moscow would welcome any “sensible initiative” aimed at reaching a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis.
