“Only Good For WW3”: Slovakia To Oppose Ukraine’s NATO Membership Bid
Last October saw a significant shift in Slovakia’s trajectory related to its stance on the Ukraine war, after the populist left-wing party Smer took the most votes in the country’s national election. Its head, who ascended to his fourth term as prime minister, Robert Fico, advanced a platform of pursuing peace in Ukraine rather than continuing to pour weapons into an increasingly hopeless campaign to evict Russian forces from the country’s eastern provinces.
In the wake of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken controversially declaring earlier this month that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” Slovakia under PM Fico is pushing back. He said in fresh comments at a press conference that Slovakia will stand firmly against any efforts to pursue Ukraine’s accession into NATO.
“Ukraine may say: ‘We want to join NATO.’ This will be their own decision. We are saying that we will not ratify [the documents on Ukraine’s accession to NATO] in parliament because Slovakia needs a neutral Ukraine. Slovakia’s interests will be threatened if Ukraine becomes a NATO member,” Fico said.
However, while rejecting the idea of Ukraine being in NATO, he did say that Slovakia supports Ukraine’s bid to become a member of the European Union. “The Slovak prime minister expressed hope that Brussels and Kiev begin talks on launching this process as soon as possible,” Russian media indicated.
In separate comments days ago, he explained that “Ukraine’s membership in NATO is only good for World War III. An independent Ukraine is enough for us.”
Those remarks were made in a weekend radio interview, where he went on to explain of his plans for relations with Moscow: “In the aftermath of conflict, there’s a keen interest in re-establishing normalcy in relations with Moscow,” he said.
