Fico: Slovakia will not participate in another war loan to Ukraine

According to Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD), Slovakia will not participate in another war loan to Ukraine. According to him, any war loans only serve to prolong suffering, which is in sharp contradiction with the peace policy of the current government. As the Prime Minister stated, instead of the plans of the so-called coalition of the willing, which includes several EU member states, he fundamentally prefers bilateral, mutually beneficial cooperation with Ukraine based on joint negotiations between the governments. TASR was informed of this by the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic.
According to the Prime Minister, events of recent days clearly underline the fundamental differences between the foreign policy of the current government and that which the opposition is striving for. “After I received an invitation to the USA for a meeting with President Donald Trump, the opposition accused me of having arranged the invitation myself, and now it is asking me to refuse the visit. With the next breath, the opposition criticizes me for not going to Paris for the meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing to help Ukraine until its very end,” he noted.

Robert Fico stated that in the case of a government formed by the current opposition, the government would “serve” Brussels and it would be possible to forget about a sovereign foreign policy for Slovakia.

He emphasized that he has long presented a different view of the war in Ukraine than Germany or the United Kingdom. “I do not believe in their strategy, it is wrong, it leads only to more and more bloodshed and it is naive if it expects a total weakening of the Russian Federation. And the strength of the current government lies in the fact that it freely expresses its own opinion. We have not succumbed to the dangerous Brussels policy of a single mandatory opinion, which is killing democracy on an unprecedented scale,” Fico stated.

According to him, the fundamental differences can be seen in the approach to events in Ukraine. “If yesterday a group of countries, but for example without Italy or the Czech Republic and others, wanted to send their soldiers to the territory of Ukraine, Slovakia cannot prevent them from doing so. However, I again strongly repeat that during the functioning of my government, no Slovak soldier will go to the territory of Ukraine as part of multinational military forces,” Fico declared.

The Prime Minister also pointed out that the Slovak Republic cannot prevent the coalition of the willing from providing another war loan, but it will not participate in it. “If a group of willing countries agrees that it will continue to send weapons to Ukraine for free, we cannot stop them,” the Prime Minister added, and he also rejected the donation of weapons.

As Prime Minister, he can imagine Slovakia’s participation as Ukraine’s neighbor in monitoring a peace agreement or ceasefire. Instead of the plans of the so-called coalition of the willing, he prefers bilateral, mutually beneficial cooperation with Ukraine based on joint negotiations between the governments. “The goal is civilian cooperation, energy and transport connections, assistance with electricity or gas and humanitarian aid, for example demining machines,” the Prime Minister specified. (7 January)