(9 Jan 2025)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brussels, Belgium – 09 January 2025
1. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico arriving at press conference
2. SOUNDBITE (Slovak) Robert Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister:
"In the second breath, I say very clearly. If this problem is not solved, the Government of the Slovak Republic will shortly take tough reciprocal measures, which I will talk about in a moment."
3. Flags of Slovakia and the EU
4. SOUNDBITE (Slovak) Robert Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister:
"We can stop all humanitarian aid, even that which was recently approved by the Government of the Slovak Republic, where we had on the table a list of de-mining equipment and other things that were intended as non-lethal aid for Ukraine."
5. Fico and Slovakia’s Minister for Economic Affairs Denisa Sakova waiting
6. SOUNDBITE (Slovak) Robert Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister:
"The Government of the Slovak Republic will decide to significantly reduce or even completely withdraw the various benefits that citizens of Ukraine, who came to us after the start of the war, on the territory of the Slovak Republic receive. Yes, some may say that it is cruel what I am saying now, but it is also cruel what (Volodymyr) Zelenskyy is doing to us and what he is doing to the EU. It is damaging. It is cruel."
7. Fico and Sakova waiting
8. SOUNDBITE (Slovak) Robert Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister:
"I am talking about the supply of electricity for so-called emergency situations. If I am not mistaken, Slovakia is probably the only one capable of supplying electricity to Ukraine within 30 minutes. Otherwise, the power grid may collapse. Again, it is a rather harsh reciprocal measure. But did Mr Zelensky ask us whether we would not be short of 500 million euros? And then he corrupted. He said that they would give that 500 million from Russian assets on condition that we vote for NATO membership for Ukraine."
9. Fico and Sakova leaving
STORYLINE:
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico claimed his government is preparing a list of reciprocal measures if Ukraine does not resume gas transit from Russia.
Fico said that on press conference in Brussels after meeting Dan Jørgensen, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing.
Ukraine on Wednesday halted Russian gas supplies to European customers through its pipeline network after a pre-war transit deal expired at the end of 2024 and almost three years into Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbour.
Fico claimed Wednesday the end of gas flows via Ukraine “will drastically affect us all in the EU but not Russia.”
The Slovakian prime minister, whose views on Russia have sharply differed from the European mainstream, has previously criticized Kyiv’s refusal to extend the transit deal, and threatened to end electricity supplies to Ukraine in response.
Even as Russian troops and tanks moved into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian natural gas kept flowing through the country’s pipeline network — set up when Ukraine and Russia were both part of the Soviet Union — to Europe, under a five-year agreement.
Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom earned money from the gas and Ukraine collected transit fees.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, confirmed Kyiv had stopped the transit “in the interest of national security."
At a summit in Brussels last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed that Kyiv would not allow Moscow to use the transits to earn “additional billions … on our blood, on the lives of our citizens.”
AP video by Mark Carlson
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