Fico threatens to halt electricity supplies to Ukraine if it stops gas transit

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has threatened retaliatory measures against Ukraine, including halting electricity supplies, if Kyiv stops the transit of Russian natural gas to Slovakia after the New Year. Fico said this in a post on social media.

Ukraine, which has been defending itself against Russia’s full-scale military aggression since February 2022, had previously announced that it did not plan to extend its contract for transporting Russian gas to Europe through its pipeline network.

„After the first day of January, we will assess the situation and the options for reciprocal measures against Ukraine. If it becomes unavoidable, we will halt supplies of electricity that Ukraine urgently needs during outages on its grid, or we will agree on another course of action,“ Fico said in a video he posted on Facebook today.

The prime minister claims that alternative routes would sharply increase costs and also affect Slovakia’s transit revenues; according to Fico, the country would lose half a billion euros in fees. He also claimed that stopping gas transit through Ukraine would affect the European Union and its competitiveness, citing estimates that the costs for the „27“ could reach 120 billion euros over the next two years. He blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom he reportedly argued at last week’s EU summit, according to diplomats.

The Slovak prime minister also reproached Zelensky for „inexplicably“ rejecting a ceasefire and thereby dragging all of Ukraine into catastrophe. According to Fico, Kyiv’s negotiating position is worsening by the day, and Ukraine „will pay a huge price for this Western adventure in the form of lost territory and the presence of foreign troops“. He again called for peace talks to begin and said Slovakia was ready to host them.

Fico met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sunday. On Putin’s orders, Russian troops invaded the neighbouring country, unleashing the bloodiest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. Putin, however, blames Kyiv and the West, which he says dragged Russia into the war.

Fico became only the third senior EU official to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow since the start of the war, Reuters noted on Sunday..

On Thursday, the Russian president confirmed that Slovakia, whose „neutral stance“ he praised, had offered to serve as a kind of „platform“ for possible talks.

Slovakia is a member of both the European Union and NATO, but has moved closer to Russia since Robert Fico returned to power for a third time in autumn 2023 and has aligned itself with Hungary’s position, AFP reported today, referring to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s contacts with Moscow. It noted that Fico had halted state military aid to Ukraine and accuses Kyiv of jeopardising supplies of Russian gas to his country, which he wants to continue buying.

Slovakia has nonetheless provided humanitarian aid to its attacked neighbour and also exports diesel and electricity to Ukraine. From January to November this year, it exported 2.4 million megawatt-hours of electricity to Ukraine, a year-on-year increase of 152 percent, Reuters reported.