Prime Minister Robert Fico (l) shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sunday, December 22, 2024. On the right is Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov. (source: kremlin.ru)
Prime Minister Robert Fico, one of a small handful of pro-Russian leaders currently in power in Europe, travelled to Moscow on Sunday for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It was the first meeting between Putin and Fico since 2016. Since then, Putin has become the subject of an international arrest warrant, issued by the International Criminal Court, for war crimes committed in Ukraine, specifically the unlawful deportation of children.
The ostensible purpose of Fico’s visit was to discuss gas transit through Ukraine.
“The highest-ranking EU officials were informed of my trip and its purpose as early as Friday,” Fico said in a social media post on Sunday. Slovak citizens were not informed of the visit before it took place. Such high-level meetings are normally scheduled weeks, and sometimes months, in advance and are widely publicised. However, there was no public announcement of Sunday's visit until after Fico had met Putin.
According to the Denník N daily, the prime minister did not fly to Moscow on an official government plane. How he got there remains unclear.
The only other trip to Moscow by an EU head of government during the current war, conducted by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, was not met with enthusiasm within the EU.
Fico stated, “My meeting today was in response to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who on Thursday, in reply to my question, stated that he opposes any gas transit through Ukraine to our territory.” This was a reference to a meeting between EU leaders and President Zelensky in Brussels on Thursday, December 19.
Fico claims that Zelensky is harming Slovakia’s interests with this stance.
Serbia’s president as Fico’s spokesperson
The meeting was originally slated for Monday, according to comments made by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on Friday, December 20. However, neither the Kremlin nor Fico confirmed the timing on Friday or Saturday, leaving the encounter shrouded in mystery until Sunday afternoon. On Sunday, the Kremlin stated that the meeting had in fact been arranged several days earlier; Slovak government officials and the Foreign Ministry had refused to confirm any such plans.
Russia officially considers Slovakia to be an enemy, grouping it with other EU and NATO member states, citing what it describes as “unfriendly actions” against the Russian Federation in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
The first hint of a meeting between Fico and Putin actually came from the Serbian president, who revealed it during an interview on the Serbian television programme Ćirilica, broadcast on December 20. Vučić claimed that the meeting would focus on Ukraine’s decision, announced around six months ago, to halt the transit of Russian gas to Europe from January 1. It is unusual for a politician from a third country to be the first to announce another European leader’s working visit, and it remains unclear why Vučić chose to do so.
