Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said he is “not interested” in imposing more sanctions on Russia on Wednesday, as Bratislava continued to block Brussels’ latest round of restrictive measures on Moscow.
“I am more and more convinced that by constantly discussing Ukraine, we in the EU are covering up our inability to deal with our most fundamental challenges and problems,” the populist strongman wrote in a post on X.
Fico added that he had a “long” telephone conversation with European Council President António Costa, during which he expressed his “astonishment” that Kyiv’s war effort is “being treated as the top priority topic” at next week’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels.
“I repeatedly reminded A. Costa that I am not interested in dealing with new sanctions packages against Russia until I see, in the conclusions of the [European Council] summit, political instructions for the European Commission on how to address the crisis in the automotive industry and the high energy prices that are making the European economy completely uncompetitive,” Fico wrote.
His comments came shortly after EU ambassadors failed to agree on the European Commission’s latest sanctions package on Russia – the 19th since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – which Slovakia has repeatedly refused to back despite EU member states’ overwhelming support for the measures.
Bratislava, however, does not appear to oppose any of the package’s specific details, which include a proposal to phase out Russian liquefied natural gas by January 2027 and listings of Russia’s “shadow fleet” that is used to evade a Western oil price cap, according to people familiar with the matter.
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