The Slovak Republic will attend a peace summit on Ukraine in Switzerland, Foreign and European Affairs Minister Juraj Blanar (Smer-SD) announced on Tuesday. Blanar will stand in for Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD), who is recovering from his gunshot wounds in the wake of the May 15 assassination attempt.
According to the Foreign Ministry press department, Slovakia's participation in the event will be a "clear message sent by the Slovak diplomacy to the Russian Federation and Ukraine".
In response to the call by the opposition SaS party to summon Russian Ambassador to Slovakia Igor Bratchikov, the ministry stated that the chief of Slovak diplomacy had discussed the peace summit in early 2024 with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as well, yet SaS criticised that meeting then. The opposition party asks the Foreign Ministry to have Bratchikov explain why the Russian Federation does not pursue peace and refuses to attend the peace conference in Switzerland.
The Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry pointed out that back in March SaS had called the Blanar-Lavrov meeting a hostile gesture against Slovakia's NATO and EU allies. "If this held true, then a similarly hostile behaviour towards the allies was shown also by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with the Russian minister during the G20 talks as well as by the Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister Hakan Fidan," stated the ministry.
The ministry declared that three months later SaS is calling for talks with the Russian side and wants to have it included in the peace summit. "The same summit that the Slovak minister discussed with the Russian minister more than three months ago. First, SaS was attacking Minister Juraj Blanar for this type of communication and now it's calling for such communication itself," claimed the ministry press department.
SaS stated that representatives of the governing coalition must put their "camaraderie" with the Russian Ambassador aside and do what is good for Slovakia - exert diplomatic pressure on Russia to start embracing the peacemaking effort.
(TASR)
