Robert Fico has informed Russian tv that he feels it’s his “private responsibility” to go to Moscow subsequent yr
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has mentioned that he’s prepared to fulfill Russian President Vladimir Putin “with out hesitation” and that he believes the West will quickly “reassess” its navy help for Ukraine.
Chatting with Russia’s Rossiya-1 TV community, Fico mentioned that he could be “more than happy” to attend Victory Day celebrations in Moscow subsequent Might, when Russia marks “the eightieth anniversary of the top of World Conflict II and, above all, the victory over Nazism. I really feel it’s my private responsibility.”
In the meantime, Fico mentioned that he’s ready to fulfill Putin “with out hesitation.” Telling interviewer Olga Skabeyeva that he “even met him when he was prime minister, earlier than he turned president,” the Slovak leftist mentioned that he was “lethal critical” a couple of face-to-face dialog with Putin.
Fico was elected prime minister of Slovakia for the third time final yr, and instantly suspended the nation’s navy support to Ukraine. Together with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, he has repeatedly known as for a diplomatic answer to the Russia-Ukraine battle, and final week condemned the EU’s approval of a €35 billion ($38 billion) mortgage to Ukraine, backed up by revenues from frozen Russian property held in Brussels.
Fico has additionally promised to veto Ukraine’s accession to NATO, arguing that such a transfer would set off a 3rd world battle.
Whereas Western weapons proceed to movement into Ukraine, Fico informed Skabeyeva that he believes “widespread sense will quickly prevail, and we are going to start to reassess the navy battle in Ukraine.”
“I help any plans with the phrase ‘peace’ in them – peace plans,” he mentioned, including that “it is much better to barter for 2 years than to permit troopers to kill one another for 2 years.”
The Kremlin maintains that it’s open to any peace plan that entails Kiev committing to navy neutrality and withdrawing its forces from Russian territory, together with Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Areas. Ukrainian chief Vladimir Zelensky, nonetheless, insists that his ten-point ‘peace system’ is the one viable roadmap to resolving the battle.
Beneath this plan, which Moscow has dismissed as “delusional,” Russia would restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders, pay reparations to Kiev, and hand its personal officers over to face battle crimes tribunals.
Zelensky has additionally floated a ‘victory plan’, claiming that if given an invite to hitch NATO, long-range missiles, and Western boots on the bottom, his forces can defeat Russia.
”If somebody needed to escalate tensions, that’s precisely what he would say,” Fico remarked on Zelensky’s proposal.
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