Slovak PM will not change his stance on war in Ukraine despite tensions with Czech Republic

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would not change his mind about the war in Ukraine because of Czech counterpart Petr Fiala's position, which prompted the suspension of bilateral government consultations.

Source: Fico in an interview with Slovak TV channel TA3, quoted by news agency ČTK, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Commenting on Prague's decision to suspend intergovernmental consultations with Slovakia due to "differences of opinion" on key foreign policy issues, Fico said: "Neither I nor Mr. Fiala will be here tomorrow, what is the point in it?"

He was outraged by the criticism directed at him, describing it as "things that do not belong to normal, modern diplomatic vocabulary."

At the same time, Fico insisted that he cared about Czech-Slovak relations: "Relations between Czechs and Slovaks are too valuable a thing for someone utilitarian to jeopardise them for some narrow political reasons."

In the end, the Slovak prime minister stated that his government would maintain its sovereign foreign policy. In his opinion, Ukraine, which has been opposing Russia's full-scale invasion for more than two years, needs a "ceasefire and peace negotiations."

Last week, in response to Prague's decision to halt talks with his cabinet, Robert Fico stated that the Czech government had chosen to jeopardise bilateral relations solely to support the war in Ukraine.

After taking power in October 2023, Robert Fico's government halted military assistance to Kyiv from Slovakia's state reserves. He also repeatedly stated that Western countries' strategy toward Ukraine had failed.

On the second anniversary of Russia's military invasion of Ukraine in February, Fico, for example, stated that the conflict began in 2014 "with the revelry of Ukrainian neo-Nazis." He argued that the West's conflict strategy was ineffective, that Slavs were dying in the war, and that the West was watching this unfold without a European Union peace plan.

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