Slovak politicians said they were forced to change their route during a trip to Moscow
Poland has banned a Slovak jet carrying a parliamentary delegation to Russia from passing through its airspace, Slovak politicians told the public broadcaster TASR on Sunday. Warsaw has contested their claim.
The delegation led by Andrej Danko and Tibor Gaspar, deputy speakers of the Slovak National Council, were set to meet Russian lawmakers and government officials to discuss trade and gas supplies. Since January 1, Ukraine has stopped the transit of Russian gas through its territory, cutting the flow to several EU countries, including Slovakia.
Because of Warsaw’s decision to block its airspace, the delegation had to fly over the Czech Republic and Germany, TASR wrote.
“I don’t understand Poland’s position, but I accept it as a reality,” Danko told the broadcaster. He added that he wanted to shed light on life in Russia.
“I want to show that people live there too, that Germans, French, Americans do business there,” Danko said.
Gaspar stated that the delegation had wanted to ask the state-owned gas company Gazprom to continue its supplies to Slovakia, despite Ukraine’s refusal to renew the transit contract. Bratislava is dependent on Russian gas delivered mainly via the Soviet-era pipeline running through the territory of Ukraine.
The Polish Foreign Ministry provided a different account of the events. “We did not bar the Slovak side from flying [over Poland]. They just sent us incomplete documents, and after we asked them to correct them, they informed us about the change of the route,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Pawel Wronski told reporters.
The relations between Kiev and Bratislava remain tense because of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s criticism of Western military aid to Ukraine.
The Slovak leader had long been a proponent of a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Upon taking office in late 2023, Fico ended his country’s military assistance to Kiev and vowed to veto its potential accession to NATO.
On Sunday, Fico threatened to veto proposed EU aid packages to Kiev and even suggested that he could cut electricity supplies to Ukraine.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski celebrated Ukraine’s decision to cut off the flow of Russian gas into Europe as “another victory.”
Moscow has stressed that Kiev’s decision to discontinue Russian gas transit only benefits the US at the expense of its European allies. The US is the “main beneficiary of this redistribution in the Old World energy markets, and the main sponsor of the Ukrainian crisis,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
