Slovak Prime Minister Says Ukraine Must Give Up Territory to End War

“There has to be some kind of compromise,” Fico said, according to POLITICO. “What do they expect, that the Russians will leave Crimea, Donbas, and Luhansk? That’s unrealistic.”

Fico was elected toward the end of 2023 after campaigning to end Slovakia’s support for the war in Ukraine. His government followed through on the pledge and stopped supplying Ukraine with military aid, which was significant since Slovakia is a NATO member.

Fico will meet with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday and said he will tell him that Slovakia will block any attempts to bring Ukraine into NATO. “I will tell him that I am against the membership of Ukraine in NATO and that I will veto it,” Fico said. “It would merely be a basis for World War III, nothing else.”

The Slovak leader said Ukraine was not a “sovereign nation” since it is “under the total influence and control of the United States.”

Responding to Fico’s comments, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said Kyiv would not give up any territory even though Ukrainian forces have no chance of beating Russia on the battlefield. “There can be no compromise on territorial integrity. Not Ukraine, not Slovakia, not any other country,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top Ukrainian officials are still pushing the idea that the war can’t end until Russia is driven out of all the territory it has captured, as well as Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014. But Ukrainian forces are on the defensive now after the failed counteroffensive, and war weariness is growing, both in Ukraine and in the Western countries the war effort is reliant on.

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.