BRATISLAVA (chatnewstv.com) — Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico warned he would move to halt emergency electricity exports to Ukraine if oil shipments to Slovakia are not restored by Monday, escalating a dispute with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over energy flows and wartime support.
“If the Ukrainian president does not resume oil supplies to Slovakia on Monday, on that same day I will ask the relevant Slovak companies to stop emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine,” Fico said in a statement posted on social media.
Fico said Slovakia had provided extensive assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion, including hosting about 180,000 Ukrainian refugees, humanitarian aid and joint cabinet meetings. He argued Kyiv had inflicted economic harm on Slovakia by halting gas transit — which he estimated at €500 million annually — and now oil deliveries, creating “further losses and logistical difficulties.”
The Slovak leader also linked the dispute to broader European energy tensions, referencing the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and asserting that Slovak-Ukrainian relations could not be “a one-way ticket benefiting only Ukraine.”
He said that if oil supplies were not restored, he would instruct SEPS, Slovakia’s state-owned electricity transmission operator, to stop emergency power deliveries used to stabilize Ukraine’s grid. Fico noted that such emergency supplies in January 2026 were needed twice as often as in all of 2025.
Citing what he called “unacceptable behavior” by Zelensky toward Slovakia, Fico added that he considered it justified to refuse Slovak participation in the latest €90 billion Western military loan package for Ukraine.
