Peter Pellegrini and Robert Fico sign the coalition treaty. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Fico and Pellegrini reinterpret Slovakia’s foreign policy, with rather different spins. MPs started debating the controversial changes to the penal and prosecution system. Anti-vaxxers are appointed to investigate Slovakia’s management of the pandemic management.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Just words, says Pellegrini
Ukraine is not a sovereign country; rather it is under the “absolute influence of the United States”. Furthermore, Ukraine should not expect to push out its Russian invaders. Prime Minister Robert Fico angered and confused Ukrainians with these statements, which he made shortly before his first prime-ministerial visit to Ukraine last week. But his coalition ally, who aspires to become the next president of Slovakia, suggests these are just words that should go in through one ear, out through the other, as the idiom is used in its Slovak iteration.
On Wednesday, Fico met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Uzhhorod, the Ukrainian city closest to the Slovak border. He opted not to follow the example of his predecessors or Western leaders, who have shown their support for President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian representatives by visiting them in Kyiv. This did not go unnoticed in Slovakia, even though Fico tried to make it into a practical matter.
Speaking to journalists after an out-of-office government session in eastern Slovakia the day before the visit, Fico said it just made sense to meet right over the border. A question about whether he was worried about travelling to the Ukrainian capital incensed him.
"And do you really think there is a war in Kyiv?" Fico said. "There is absolutely normal life there."
This was on the same day that Kyiv and Kharkiv were experiencing Russian drone and missile strikes, which killed 18 people and left dozens wounded, according to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Uzhhorod
Shmyhal did not say whether he and Fico discussed what life is really like in cities that Russia can and does target with airstrikes at any time it pleases. He did tell Fico about the shelling of civilians and kidnappings of children, among other things. “Despite some differences of opinion, we intend to develop a policy of "new pragmatism" with the Slovakian government that will benefit both states,” Shmyhal tweeted after the meeting, which lasted about two hours.
