Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico arrived in Russia on a “working visit” and met with Putin one-on-one on Sunday evening.

Fico’s views on Russia’s war on Ukraine differ sharply from most other European leaders. Slovakia's prime minister returned to power last year after his leftist party won parliamentary elections on a pro-Russia and anti-American platform.

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico met Russian President Vladimir Putin in a previously unannounced visit to the Kremlin on Sunday for talks, Russian state media reported. It was the first visit by an official representative from Slovakia to Russia since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The long-term contract, signed in 2019, allowed the Russian state energy giant to pump natural gas through Ukraine’s vast network of pipelines to customers in the EU. However, in a bid to weaponize energy flows, Russia cut off supplies to countries like Germany and Poland in the wake of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Fico arrived in Russia on a ‘working visit’ and met with Putin one-on-one on Sunday evening, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russia’s RIA agency

Russian President Vladimir Putin has hosted Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, in a rare visit to the Kremlin by an EU leader since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in the Kremlin on Sunday with Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico (shown here in Brussels in February 2024), in a rare visit to Moscow by an EU leader since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP)