“The country’s foreign ministry advises Ukraine “not to create new enemies and fabricate the appearance of some second front””, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“We reject any nonsense about the opening of the second energy front, which the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi baselessly invents, as well as some imaginary alliance with Volodymyr Putin,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on December 29.
Robert Fitso’s words regarding the suspension of electricity supply to Ukraine due to the refusal of transit of Russian gas are considered “exaggerated” by the department.
“The current government of the Slovak Republic has set the project of strengthening the interconnection of the energy transmission system as one of the priorities in the road map of Slovak-Ukrainian cooperation. Yes, electricity is supplied by Slovak companies on a commercial basis, as they cannot finance the Ukrainian state. Since the beginning of the conflict, we have helped and will continue to help the defenseless, affected people of Ukraine in humanitarian terms, within the limits of our capabilities,” the message states.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia is convinced that Russian gas, which is distributed through Ukrainian territory, brings significant income to Ukraine. And they also advise “not to create new enemies and fabricate the emergence of some second front, because the member states of the European Union, including Slovakia, support Ukraine and its people.”
“We carefully and patiently monitor Ukraine’s communications in the interests of respectable relations, but first the Ukrainian president made an absurd proposal during the December European Council – to buy Slovakia’s consent to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization not with his own money (although it is not for sale!), but with Russian money assets, and now he threatens Slovakia with the European Community, in which his country is not even a member yet. All this, however, can quickly turn against Ukraine itself,” the agency said.
On December 27, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, said that his country will consider actions in response to Ukraine’s termination of transit of Russian gas from January 1. According to him, Bratislava will stop the supply of electricity if necessary.
In response to this statement, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that “it seems that Putin instructed Fico to open a second energy front against Ukraine at the expense of the interests of the people of Slovakia.”
A five-year contract for the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe was signed in 2019. The main buyers were still Slovakia and Austria.
The Soviet-era Urengoy-Pomari-Uzhhorod gas pipeline delivers gas from Siberia through the city of Suja, now under the control of the Ukrainian military, in Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Then it goes through Ukraine to Slovakia.
In Slovakia, the gas pipeline branches into two routes to the Czech Republic and to Austria. Slovakia receives about 3 billion cubic meters from Gazprom per year, which is about two-thirds of its needs.
In October, during a joint press conference with the head of the government of Slovakia, Robert Fico, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal already stated that Ukraine will not extend the agreement with Russia on the transit of energy carriers after its expiration.