Russia-friendly Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy want to get in the same room to iron out their issues, but can’t agree where to meet.
Disagreement between the pair flared up over a gas transit agreement under which Slovakia was able to buy Russian gas, but has become increasingly heated and personal and now includes allegations of arrogance and cyberattacks.
In a video released Monday, in which he sharply criticized Kyiv’s stance on the gas dispute, Fico said the two leaders should sit down at a table in Slovakia, at the Slovak-Ukrainian border, to discuss the gas dispute.
Zelenskyy quickly responded: “Ok. Come to Kyiv on Friday.”
The current tensions between the two countries owe to the expiry, at the turn of the year, of a deal that allowed Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom to supply gas to the EU via pipelines running through Ukraine.
Slovakia wanted to extend the deal and continue importing Russian fuel through Ukraine, but Kyiv rebuffed its requests.
Against this backdrop, Fico thumbed his nose at Kyiv by visiting Moscow in December and shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose brutal war against Ukraine has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
The dispute hasn’t subsided since. Fico last week threatened to cut desperately needed electricity exports to Ukraine and slash aid to refugees fleeing Russia’s war.
The war of words between Bratislava and Kyiv continued to escalate. On Sunday, Zelenskyy took a personal jab at Fico: “It’s good that Slovakia’s Prime Minister Fico has finally returned from his vacation at a luxurious hotel in Vietnam and is now in Bratislava. For him, personally, it must be challenging — switching from living in luxury to now trying to fix his own mistakes,” the Ukrainian president wrote on X.
“It was an obvious mistake for Fico to believe that his shadowy schemes with Moscow could go on indefinitely,” he wrote, adding that although Kyiv offered its assistance to Slovakia, Fico “arrogantly refused.”
Fico began Monday’s video statement, also released as an open letter, by saying he wouldn’t comment on Zelenskyy’s remarks because he didn’t want to “further escalate tensions.” He reiterated that the decision to stop the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine was causing “extensive damage to Ukraine itself, to Slovakia and to the European Union in particular.”
“I want to fully focus on resolving the situation related to the suspension of gas transit,” Fico wrote. He added that his views on several areas differed from those presented by Zelenskyy, but that the joint negotiations between the Slovak and Ukrainian governments were moving toward resolving the debate.
The conflict has escalated beyond the gas dispute, with Slovakia’s agriculture minister accusing Ukraine of being the source of the largest cyberattack on Slovakia to date, which hit the country’s land registry and shut down an agency that manages land and property data.
The fallout has also heightened tensions within the Bratislava government, with Slovakia’s coalition facing a crisis: While Fico’s Smer party and the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) support parts of Moscow’s international agenda, the social democratic Hlas (Voice) party maintains a critical stance toward Russia.
The crisis has also highlighted the strained relations between Fico and Slovak President Peter Pellegrini, the former head of Hlas and an increasingly vocal critic of the prime minister.
Fico gave his partners a March deadline to resolve their current impasse.
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