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Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico held one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin late Sunday evening as part of a bid to secure continued access to cheap Russian fossil fuels.
Fico’s decision to travel to Russia for trade talks will prove controversial among his fellow EU leaders, and defies the bloc’s public commitments to end its reliance on Moscow for gas imports.
The leftist-populist Slovak politician arrived in the country for what Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov called a “working visit,” posed for pictures and shook hands with Putin.
Peskov added it could be “easily assumed” that energy ties will be on the agenda. The diplomatic trip came as Slovakia and Hungary seek a deal to avoid being cut off from Russian gas when a key transit agreement with Ukraine expires at the end of 2024.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago, only two other EU heads of government have visited Putin — Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Both trips were widely condemned, with the EU’s executive arm publicly rebuking Orbán’s self-declared peace mission and insisting he had no mandate to negotiate.
While Fico’s trip was not announced in advance by the Slovak government, Serbian President Aleksandr Vučić hinted the Slovak leader could travel to Moscow on Monday to discuss gas purchases. “I don’t have to tell you what kind of reaction [this] will cause among other European leaders from the EU,” he said.
A spokesperson for the European Commission was not immediately available to comment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out extending an agreement with Russian state energy company Gazprom that allows it to export natural gas via the country’s pipeline network to Slovakia, Hungary and other Central European countries. Putin has also previously said he expects the contract to come to an end.
Fico, who along with Orbán has consistently been one of the most Russia-friendly leaders in the EU, had promised “very intense” negotiations behind the scenes to avoid that deadline. A senior advisor to Zelenskyy told POLITICO on Saturday that Kyiv estimates Slovakia earns around half a billion dollars a year from access to discounted Russian gas.
Fico has repeatedly praised Russia and Putin, while the Kremlin has been equally solicitous in response, with Peskov describing Fico’s May 2024 assassination attempt as a “great tragedy” and bidding him a “speedy recovery.”
In February 2024, Fico said: “The West is unable to admit that its strategy of using the conflict in Ukraine to destroy the Russian Federation has been unsuccessful.”
