Slovakia’s longtime leader Robert Fico, who has kept up warm relations with Russia and refuses military aid for Ukraine, said that Europe was closer than ever to a large-scale conflict erupting from the Ukraine war.
At the same time, some European leaders, such as those in Poland and France have warned of Russian hybrid attacks.
In his video message on X, Fico said Europe faces a "mortal danger" while watching the West "pour fuel on the fire" with its support for Ukraine, which he said had been to no avail.
"The failure of the strategy to destroy Russia through the war in Ukraine has led some Western politicians to believe that if the goal cannot be achieved through the Ukrainian army and full support for it, then every effort must be made to trigger a conflict between NATO and Russia," Fico claimed in the message.
He said the war in Ukraine was not Slovakia's nor NATO's war but noted that "Certain war hawks within NATO are trying, at any cost, to turn this war into a conflict between Russia and NATO."
Earlier this week, Fico warned a drone incursion could spark the activation of NATO's collective defence clause and he wanted to prevent Slovakia — which neighbours Ukraine and is a member of the NATO military alliance — from becoming part of an armed conflict.
He said on Saturday that creating a pretext to start a war was easy and reiterated Slovakia would not send soldiers to fight under a fabricated pretext.
In the video, the Slovak prime minister gave the number of the Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war every month, claiming the figure had previously been unveiled by Warsaw.
“Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, whom I greatly respect, yesterday said that his Ukrainian partners had confirmed to him that this figure reached 27,000 in a single month”, Fico stated.
"I have no right to question these figures, although deliberately exaggerating the scale of human losses could influence the Western world to increase military and financial aid to Ukraine even further," he added.
His comments came as Tusk warned, citing unnamed intelligence agencies, that Russia plans to launch hybrid drone and missile attacks against countries supporting Ukraine and portray them as accidental.
Tusk argued such incidents could be intended to undermine NATO members' willingness to respond to aggression and create the impression that the alliance's Article 5 collective defense guarantee was "only theoretical, not practical."
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that Russia was intensifying its campaign of hybrid attacks against Europe, and he cited an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport in August, which the German government concluded Moscow was behind, as evidence of the changing nature of Russian aggression.
(mo)
Source: PAP, Reuters