Ukraine is running out of ammunition. (source: Mier Ukrajine)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. The Slovak government failed to join the Czech government's initiative, so the people of Slovakia decided to chip in.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Slovaks collect millions to buy munitions for Ukraine
“It wasn’t possible to negotiate with [the enemy], they had to be defeated. This experience from World War II applies, of course, in Ukraine, too,” says 99-year-old World War II veteran and ex-partisan Otto Šimko.
This week’s biggest Ukraine-related development happened in the US, where the Congress on Saturday approved a $61-billion military aid package that had been stalled for months by far-right members of the House of Representatives. But something in a similar vein has been happening in Slovakia, too – in spite of the Fico government “no bullets to Ukraine” policy.
The quote from Otto Šimko that opens this article comes from a video promoting the latest, and by far the most successful, Slovak public crowdfunding project for Ukraine.
Slovaks respond to Czech initiative
The Municia pre Ukrajinu (Ammunition for Ukraine) project, organised by a consortium of civil society organisations, gained momentum in just the past week and has managed to collect more than €3 million as of this writing to buy ammunition for the defenders of Ukraine. It is Slovak society’s response to a Czech government initiative which aims to put together a network of nations willing to contribute to the procurement, on world markets, of ammunition for Ukraine.
The initiative was first announced at the Munich Security Conference in March, when Czech President Petr Pavel said the Czech government had located 800,000 artillery shells in countries outside the EU (among them South Korea, South Africa and Turkey). Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said last week that they would like to make the supplies of ammunition for Ukraine more of a long-term project. More than a dozen countries have already contributed to the Czech initiative. So far, they have been able to procure half a million pieces of artillery ammunition, according to news reports.
“The Slovak government and Prime Minister Fico declined to join the initiative. It would be a shame if we left it at that. We refuse to deprive our war-ridden neighbour of aid,” wrote the authors of the Slovak fundraiser. They called on Slovaks to show that they understand what is at stake in Ukraine.
“On the one hand, Robert Fico refused to support the Czech initiative to purchase ammunition; on the other hand he supports it via the ammunition producers co-owned by Slovakia,” one of the people behind the crowdfunding initiative, Fedor Blaščák, told the Sme daily. “Our fundraiser only makes this attitude consistent and allows the country to join the initiative that is perceived internationally as one of the most important.”
