Nearly three years after the start of the Russian assault, will Ukraine's destiny be decided in Bratislava? Slovakia has confirmed that it is ready to host peace talks, with Russian President Vladimir Putin having previously deemed it “acceptable” for the country to become a “platform” for dialogue.
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“We offer Slovak soil for such negotiations,” Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar said on Facebook on the night of Thursday to Friday, December 27. According to him, they must take place “with the participation of all parties and therefore also of Russia”, unlike the summit in June in Switzerland.
“A positive signal to end the war”
Thursday, December 26, the Russian president affirmed that Slovakia, whose “neutral position” he had praised, had offered itself as a sort of “platform” for possible negotiations. “We consider the Russian president's statement as a positive signal to end this war, bloodshed and destruction as quickly as possible,” wrote Juraj Blanar.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, one of the very few European leaders remaining close to the Kremlin, met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on December 22, provoking the anger of kyiv. According to the Slovak Foreign Minister, Bratislava informed its “Ukrainian partners” in October of its availability for peace negotiations.
Reconciliation with Moscow
Although Slovakia is a member of the European Union and NATO, it has moved closer to Russia, espousing the Hungarian position, since the return to power of nationalist Robert Fico in the fall of 2023. The president has in effectively stopped all military aid to Ukraine and accuses kyiv of endangering its country's supply of Russian gas, which it wishes to continue to buy.
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Ukraine announced last summer that it would not renew its contract with Russia until the end of the year to transport Russian gas to Europe via its extensive network of gas pipelines. No solution has yet been found.
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