Ukraine must be willing to cede some of its territory to Russia for a peace deal, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Saturday.
Ahead of a scheduled meeting between recently installed Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Ukrainian counterpart Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday, the left-wing populist Slovak leader ruffled feathers in Kyiv by suggesting that any peace solution will likely require some territorial concessions to Russia.
“There has to be some kind of compromise, which will be very painful for both sides. And what are they waiting for? That the Russians will leave Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk? It’s unrealistic,” Fico said according to the Slovak news outlet Aktuality.
This comes in direct opposition to President Zelensky’s demands that Russia withdraws from all occupied territory before negotiations even start, making the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders, which not only include the occupied areas in the Donbas, but also the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow has controlled since it annexed the territory in 2014.
Russia, meanwhile, claims that the territories in question have been “liberated” given that they are home to large populations of ethnic Russians, whom the Kremlin claims have faced discrimination from the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.
The Slovakian leader, who was elected on a left-wing populist platform last year, also reiterated his plans to block any attempts to incorporate Ukraine into the American-led NATO military alliance. As the head of a NATO and EU member state, Fico has veto power over Ukraine being admitted to either institution.
“I will tell him that I am against the membership of Ukraine in NATO and that I will veto it,” he said of his planned meeting with Ukrainian PM Shmyhal. “It would merely be a basis for World War III, nothing else.”
“Ukraine is not an independent and sovereign country,” Fico added, claiming that Kyiv is merely acting “under the total influence and control of the United States.”
The populist PM went on to say that the Slovakian government will not provide any of its weapons, claiming that Ukraine is “one of the most corrupt nations in the world.”
Despite coming from a left-wing perspective, Fico has found common cause with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who prior to Fico’s election was a lone voice in Europe calling for peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
During a press conference this week alongside Orbán in Budapest, Fico criticised the EU for attempting to punish Hungary for holding up a €50 billion EU aid package for Ukraine, saying: “I will never agree that a country should be punished for fighting for its sovereignty. I will never agree with such an attack on Hungary.”