Slovakia’s Pravda newspaper reports on comments from Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in which the two neighboring leaders put forward their views on achieving peace in Ukraine, which both NATO member-countries border.
Fico disagreed with the EU’s new sanctions on Russia imposed last week, calling the restrictions a “plague” that would harm the European Union, while having a negligible impact on Russia. “Sanctions are like a plague and I reject the sanctions policy,” he told Slovak broadcaster STVR, Pravda reports.
He said he would oppose any new sanctions, and would veto them if he thought they would damage Slovakia’s economy.
Hungary’s Prime Minister Orban said that the EU should follow the path of the United States concerning the war in Ukraine. Orban said that if the EU were to strive for a ceasefire in Ukraine, forget about sanctions, and return to “normal economic cooperation” with Russia, this would provide a huge economic benefit to all involved. “Europeans must understand that there is no point in going down different paths, let’s join the Americans,” he told Hungarian TV2, Pravda reports.
“We need direct American-Russian, and then or before that, Russian-European negotiations. Russian-Ukrainian negotiations will never end this war. We hope that this will happen as soon as possible, but for now we can only hope for it,” he said.
