Slovakia’s prime minister claims Ukraine is jeopardising Europe’s global competitiveness by refusing to allow Russia to export gas into the EU over its territory.
Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico was in combative mood after meeting EU top brass today to discuss Ukraine’s decision to end the transit of Russian gas through its territory, reiterating warnings of “reciprocal measures” against its war-ravaged neighbour.
These could include limiting electricity supplies and aid for Ukrainian refugees, Fico said, also implying that his government might be prepared to block action at the EU level.
“Yes, some may say that it is cruel what I am saying now, but it is also cruel what [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is doing to us and what he is doing to the EU,” Fico told reporters in Brussels. “It is damaging. It is cruel.”
Fico claims Kyiv’s refusal to cut a new supply deal with the Kremlin when the five-year contract between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz expired on 31 December has pushed up gas prices, and will also cost Slovakia €500m a year in lost transit fees for supply of gas further west into the EU.
Fico, long an outspoken critic of the EU’s response to Russia’s undeclared war on Ukraine, raised the temperature over the New Year as he threatened to curtail electricity supplies and aid to Ukraine unless Kyiv agreed to the continued transit of Russian gas through its territory.
In a social media post on 2 January he said Ukraine’s actions amounted to the “sabotage” of Slovakia’s economy.
The European Commission insists the EU and its member states have had ample time to prepare as the five-year contract between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz approached expiry on 31 December, and repeated this week that it saw no threat to EU energy security.
The Slovak premier pointed to the fact that Brussels has not sanctioned Russian gas, and that substantial shipments of LNG continue to flow east even as the US has ramped up exports to the EU to partially compensate for a huge drop in pipeline flows from its one-time largest supplier.
Fresh from meeting energy commission Dan Jørgensen, Fico said he expects the EU to address the damage the gas supply situation was doing to his country and the bloc’s competitiveness more broadly, especially vis-à-vis the US and China. He hinted that Bratislava might be prepared to brandish its veto rights in EU decisions concerning the ongoing war, as Hungary has done.
Despite Fico’s angry rhetoric after the meeting, he and Jørgensen issued a joint statement speaking of a “good and open discussion on the energy situation and wider implications” of the end of Russian gas flows through Ukraine.j
“In this context, we have agreed to set up a High-Level Working Group to follow up and identify options based on a joint assessment of the situation and see how the EU can help,” they said.
The Slovak premier, who survived an assassination attempt last May, slammed his political opponents at home during his lengthy press conference, clearly aimed at much at his domestic audience as towards Kyiv or Brussels.
His latest comments came little more than a fortnight after a widely criticised pre-Christmas trip to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
