Slovakia’s Robert Fico visits Putin in Moscow amid Ukraine gas dispute

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Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico visited the Kremlin on Sunday; This was the third visit by an EU member state leader since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Fico’s visit to Russia comes after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this year. In April 2022, just a few weeks after the invasion of Ukraine, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer met with Putin in the Russian capital.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Fico came to Russia on a “working visit” and had a one-on-one meeting with Putin on Sunday evening. He did not immediately specify the focus of the talks.

The visit of the Slovak Prime Minister follows the recent escalation of the long-standing dispute between Fico and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the Ukrainian leader’s decision to completely stop the transit of Russian gas through Ukrainian territory after the end of 2024.

Slovakia, a landlocked country, remains heavily dependent on Russian gas, which it receives from state monopoly Gazprom through a pipeline across Ukraine.

“If someone is going to block gas transit to the territory of the Slovak Republic, if someone is going to cause an increase in gas prices on European territory, if someone is going to cause huge economic damage to the European Union,” Fico said at a press conference at the end of a one-day summit of EU leaders in Brussels earlier this month. “The President is Zelenskyy,” he said.

“He has the right to be nervous. I wouldn’t want to be in his place because the country is in a difficult situation,” he added, insisting that Slovakia would never allow Ukraine to join NATO.

Visits and phone calls from European leaders to Putin have become rare since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine.

Orbán’s July visit was widely condemned by both Kiev and European leaders, and the Hungarian prime minister is seen as having the warmest relations with Putin among EU leaders.

He routinely blocked, delayed or diluted Brussels’ efforts to aid Kiev and impose sanctions on Moscow for its actions in Ukraine.