Slovakia's New Prime Minister Halts Military Aid to Ukraine: Reasons Revealed

Slovakia's new Prime Minister Robert Fico has announced that Bratislava will no longer provide military assistance to Ukraine, as reported by Meduza.

“The position of my government is that an immediate cessation of hostilities is the best solution we have for Ukraine. The European Union should transform from a supplier of arms to a peacekeeper. It is better to negotiate peace for 10 years than to kill each other for 10 years without any results,” Fico stated at a meeting of the parliamentary committee on European affairs.

The Prime Minister also deemed unrealistic the scenario in which Russian troops withdraw to the borders of 1991. “After a year of killing each other, the Russians have gained more territorial benefits than Ukraine. So, explain to me what will happen a year from now? We see that there is no military solution,” Fico added.

Additionally, the Prime Minister expressed his intention not to support the imposition of new sanctions against Russia without assessing their impact on Slovakia and other EU countries. He reiterated his previous remarks that the war in Ukraine is caused by “the attacks of Ukrainian fascists on the peaceful population of Russian ethnicity.”

In turn, the BBC Russian Service notes that since the onset of the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Slovakia has actively supplied arms to the Ukrainian armed forces and has become a crucial link in the logistics chain of Western aid supply.