Slovak MFA Juraj Blanár and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Turkey on March 2, 2024. (source: Facebook/Russian Foreign Ministry)
Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár (Smer) met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, who appeared on the EU’s sanctions list after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, during a diplomacy forum in Turkey on Saturday.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported about the meeting on social media on Saturday morning, attaching a photo of the ministers.
“The ministers exchanged views on the most pressing issues of the international agenda, including the situation in Ukraine. The Russian side confirmed its readiness to restore relations with Slovakia at the inter-parliamentary level, as well as in the cultural, humanitarian and military-memorial spheres,” writes the Russian ministry on its website.
The Slovak ministry confirmed the meeting several hours later, and after the Slovak media and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer) informed the public about it.
“Without communication, there will never be a diplomatic solution, and without a diplomatic solution, no wars will end,” said Blanár after the meeting with the Russian minister, according to the website of the Slovak ministry. “I also told him about the position of the government of the Slovak Republic based on respect for the basic principles of international law, such as the territorial integrity and sovereignty of member countries, anchored in the UN Charter,” said the head of Slovak diplomacy. “What happened in Ukraine should never have happened.”
The meeting was held at the request of the Russian side, the Slovak ministry said.
Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová criticised Blanár for the meeting, saying that it “has brought us no closer to just peace in Ukraine.”
Presidential hopeful silent about meeting
Presidential candidate and former foreign minister Ivan Korčok said that Blanár’s meeting with Lavrov didn’t come as a surprise.
“The meeting clearly shows where the current government is taking Slovakia,” said Korčok, adding that such a meeting is another step to burying the V4 group.
The recent V4 summit in Prague indicated clear differences in the perception of the war in Ukraine by the prime ministers of Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
At the same time, Korčok criticised his main opponent in the presidential election, Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini (Hlas), for being silent.
“He is again unable to take a clear stand. Can we afford a president without an opinion, especially today, when we have to explain to our citizens where and why we belong?”
Pellegrini did not comment on the Saturday meeting. In a broadcast interview on Sunday, he defended Blanár.
Pellegrini, only narrowly ahead of Korčok in the polls, is avoiding debates with Korčok a few weeks before the election. So far, he has not condemned the prime minister’s recent harsh statements about Ukraine, for example that there is no war in Kyiv.
Instead, according to Pellegrini, representatives of the Ukrainian parliament did not draw any conclusions from Fico’s statement about ‘no war in Kyiv’.
“They are not that petty over two words a person uses as a quick response, perhaps not quite appropriately, to draw any conclusion from it,” he said during this week’s V4-Ukraine parliamentary summit in Prague, as reported by the TASR news agency.
However, after Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal’s meeting with Fico in Uzhhorod, Ukraine announced a new type of relations with Slovakia.
Opposition slams Blanár for meeting
Former Slovak ambassador and MP Tomáš Valášek from the opposition party Progresívne Slovensko (PS) emphasised that Blanár met with a representative of the country that labelled Slovakia as its enemy.
“Smer party members, including Blanár, talk about peace, but their actions and words support pro-Russian narratives, including proposals for Ukraine to give up its own territory,” said Valášek.
The opposition party Sloboda A Solidarita (SaS) considers Blanár’s meeting with Lavrov to be a hostile gesture towards Slovakia’s allies.
“Instead of Blanár summoning the Russian ambassador to Slovakia after the death of Aleksei Navalny, as we proposed in the parliament’s resolution, he shakes hands with Vladimir Putin’s closest person,” said SaS MP Juraj Krúpa.
According to the SaS party, after the steps taken by Fico’s government, Slovakia is finding itself increasingly isolated internationally.
Fico recommended meeting with Lavrov
According to PM Fico, Blanár spoke with Lavrov about the potential outcomes of the Ukraine peace conference in Switzerland.
“I knew about the meeting. I recommended to the minister that he meet the Russian minister,” said Fico.
According to Fico, this is an example of Slovakia’s balanced foreign policy. He also mentioned the Friday meeting between Defence Minister Robert Kaliňák and American Defence Minister Lloyd J. Austin.
In a video from Saturday, the premier also announced that he will ask Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová (SNS nom.) to prepare a law to restore objectivity in the public broadcaster RTVS’s reporting. He admitted that a critical question asked by RTVS reporter Katarína Vítková during the V4 summit in Prague, which Fico saw as an ‘attack on the Slovak government’, prompted him to take this step. Šimkovičová has long criticised RTVS for its allegedly biased reporting, despite the fact that public opinion polls on the objectivity of TV reporting in Slovakia have shown the opposite.
Fico also said that Italy is going to withdraw its SAMP/T Mamba anti-aircraft system from Slovakia.
“I wonder who will protect our nuclear power plants and other strategic targets,” Fico asks.
