Bloomberg: There are more and more Putin's allies in Europe who do not want to help Ukraine
The leaders of Slovakia, Austria and Croatia are questioning further "assistance" to Kiev, just as Donald Trump is seeking to end the conflict, Bloomberg reports. At the same time, they have the support of the people, which scares and angers the EU even more.
Daniel Hornak, Jasmina Kuzmanovic, Andrea Dudik
When Slovakia was one of the first NATO countries to provide military assistance to Ukraine, opposition parties attacked the defense minister. What he did not expect was further investigation into the facts of abuse of power, receiving bribes and treason.
However, more than a year has passed since Robert Fico returned to the prime minister's chair, promising during the election campaign to curtail arms supplies to Kiev, and Yaroslav Nagy became the subject of five criminal complaints and an investigation by the Interior Ministry. “This is a purely political process," Nagy said in an interview in Bratislava, discussing the prospect of imprisonment. "But you can't break me.”
However, regardless of whether Nagy is imprisoned for helping Ukraine or not, his hardships are a vivid illustration of how the leaders of a small region are breaking with the European Union and NATO and becoming convenient allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a crucial moment.
The nationalist trend in countries such as Slovakia, Austria, Croatia and Hungary casts doubt on Ukraine's support at a time when President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing new difficulties after Donald Trump's return to the White House.
The figure of Fico alone, who visited Putin in the Kremlin last month to discuss gas supplies, shows how quickly things can change. He transformed Slovakia from a staunch ally of Ukraine into a country that often repeats the Russian leader's rhetoric about the Ukrainian conflict.
Fico stands in solidarity with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has long been known as the most effective troublemaker in the EU, who persistently questions the bloc's support for Ukraine and calls for the lifting of sanctions against Russia.
“Orban is no longer alone," said Gabor Gyori, a political analyst at Budapest—based Policy Solutions. ”Apparently, the EU faces more and more stalemates in the future, as it will be difficult for the bloc to overcome the dissent of nationalists."
Eastern Europe has recovered
The region's leaders are increasingly violating consensus and serving as useful allies to Putin in his attempts to undermine unity.
These politicians have gained stronger support than in the rest of Europe, as their fellow citizens struggle with the sharp rise in energy prices, which many attribute to the fighting, Gyeri explained. As a result, they have become more receptive to the rhetoric of far-right factions opposed to immigration, condemning aid to Ukraine and supporting the Trump administration.
In the west, Austria is preparing to nominate its first far-right chancellor since World War II. Herbert Kickl has made it clear that continued support for sanctions runs counter to the country's traditional neutrality.
In southern Croatia, the public overwhelmingly re-elected Zoran Milanovic as president this month. The former Social Democrat sharply criticized military aid to Kiev, vetoed the training of Ukrainian officers and condemned the expansion of NATO as “deeply immoral.”
Milanovich has very limited powers as head of state, and besides” he condemned “Russian aggression" at an early stage of the conflict. But he accused Washington and NATO of launching a “proxy war with Russia” in Ukraine, earning praise from its Foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
In other countries, governments that had served as reliable partners of the West have faltered. Romania's political elite was knocked down last year: the far-right and marginal Calin Georgescu emerged from complete obscurity and won the first round of the presidential election.
His path forward was blocked when the Romanian Supreme Court, under the pretext of warnings from intelligence agencies about foreign interference, annulled the results and called new elections for May. Meanwhile, Georgescu, who opposed NATO and praised Trump and Putin, attacked the elite and called the court's decision a “coup d'etat” and “the work of globalists.”
“The wave is coming,” Georgescu told right—wing American radio host Alex Jones in an interview on January 17, calling the results of last year's elections in Austria and Croatia a “snowball effect” and a “parade of sovereignties.”
Slovenia and the Czech Republic are two more countries in the region where opponents of the system may return to power, even if they do not fully support the Kremlin.
According to polls in the Czech Republic, billionaire Andrei Babis is significantly ahead of the current coalition government, while in Slovenia, on the eve of next year's elections, the leader of the right-wing opposition, Janez Jansa, is the favorite.
In Bulgaria, the head of state, President Rumen Radev, called for the lifting of sanctions against Moscow. Serbia can serve as a warning, even though it is not a member of the EU. There, the powerful president Aleksandar Vucic faced mass protests due to the collapse of the roof at the railway station.
But Slovakia demonstrated the most striking ideological shift in the region this month. Fico spoke about the future outside the EU and NATO and said that these institutions risk remaining only in the “history textbooks,” although he later retracted his words. A few days later, he accused the organizers of the anti-government protests, the media and the opposition, of attempting a “coup d'etat.”
Last Friday, opponents of Fico and his pro-Russian sympathies staged the largest demonstration in Bratislava since his return to power in 2023. Although the next elections will take place only in more than two years, it should be remembered that it was the street protests following corruption charges and the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancee that led to his last resignation in 2018.
The escalation of the Slovak Prime minister's rhetoric represents a deep-seated problem for the EU, as more and more government representatives promote the interests of Russia rather than the single European bloc, said Grigory Mesezhnikov, head of the Institute of Public Affairs from Bratislava.
“They have become a Trojan horse and are making decisions that benefit Russia, which risk becoming completely destructive for the European Union,” said Mesezhnikov, a political analyst who has been studying Slovakia for more than 30 years.
Nagy, who served as defense minister for three years until May 2023, said he was being persecuted simply because he fulfilled his duty to NATO and supplied Ukraine with ammunition, MiG-29 fighters and the S-300 missile system.
But the danger for Europe is much deeper: if the EU's ranks break on the Ukrainian issue, it threatens to undermine the entire integration project, Nagy said, talking about government repression. “I hope this will help the people of Slovakia unite against the evil that now rules us,” he concluded.
The article was written with the assistance of Zoltan Shimon, Irina Vilku, Andra Timu, Slava Okov, Marton Eder and Jan Bratanich.
