FILE PHOTO: Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen speaks with Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at the Czernin Palace, in Prague, Czech Republic, May 31, 2024. Peter David Josek/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -Slovakia on Wednesday pushed back on pressure it is facing to cut back its purchases of Russian energy, saying it was ready to discuss the issue, but singled out some European states for increasing their gas purchases from Moscow.
Populist-led Slovakia and Hungary - both EU members - have sought to maintain political ties with Russia, which supplies the majority of their oil needs, and have argued that it would be too costly to wean themselves off Russian supplies after building their infrastructure around it.
But they have over the last couple of weeks come under further pressure after U.S. President Donald Trump said he wanted to see the bloc completely end its Russian energy purchases.
That prompted the EU to bring forward in a 19th sanctions package on Russia with the aim of phasing out all Russian energy imports by the start of 2027.
"We don't have any other options which could be sustainable and also for the price to be reasonable," Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
"It takes time to diversify this. So that's why we are calling for some kind of empathy," adding that in any case sanctions had not worked to change the course of the war.
The West has imposed tens of thousands of sanctions on Russia over its 3-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine, and its 2014 annexation of Crimea, in a bid to hobble Russia's economy.
Blanar, whose country has previously held up packages before a compromise was finally reached, said Slovakia could lose as much as 10 billion euros if it were to break some contracts that run until 2034.
HYPOCRISY
Suggesting that exemptions and possible future compensation should be considered, he also said the bloc should tackle high electricity prices.
Blanar, who held talks in New York with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said there was a certain hypocrisy to criticizing Slovakia when liquefied natural gas purchases from Russia to Western Europe had increased by 30% over the last year.
"France, Spain, and the Netherlands... so can you see the picture is a little bit more colourful than black and white," he said.
Blanar dismissed categorisations that Slovakia and Hungary were the black sheep in Europe for continuing to engage with Moscow, arguing that there would not be a military solution to the war and that as Trump had himself done it was necessary to engage with Moscow.
"Any forcible change of internationally recognised borders is unacceptable for the Slovak Republic and what we were (saying) from the very beginning was that this war doesn't have any military solution. Let's proceed with any diplomatic effort," he said.
"We have been calling for that for more than three and a half years. And once more, I have to state very clearly, if it weren't for Trump, the peace negotiation would never have started."
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Alistair Bell)
