Gaspar: Moscow Trip Aimed to Urge Other Member States to Initiate Peace Talks

Bratislava, January 16 (TASR) - During negotiations in Moscow, the Slovak parliamentary delegation aimed to send a signal to start discussing how to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, stated House Vice-chair Tibor Gaspar (Smer-SD) at a press conference on Thursday. Slovak National Party (SNS) leader and MP Andrej Danko announced that the parliamentary delegation will also travel to Moscow in May for the celebrations marking the end of World War II. "Our delegation was meant to symbolically urge other member states to begin negotiations on this issue and to pressure political leaders in their own countries to finally negotiate peace," stated Gaspar. Danko noted that Slovak MPs were the first parliamentary delegation since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. He spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the possibility of peace talks. "They want to resolve the situation, and they are aware that the first step must be taken by the Russian Federation and the United States," he added. The SNS leader explained that no boundaries of Slovakia's anchorage within the European Union or NATO had been exceeded. "We have repeated that we are members of the European Union, but we have the right to talk about the reform of the Union," he added. The talks also covered gas supplies to Slovakia. "A large amount of the liquefied gas we buy is Russian, and we buy it four times more expensive," he said, adding that gas on the market is more expensive because it no longer goes through Ukraine. According to Gaspar, Russia explained the reasons for the conflict by saying it felt threatened by NATO's expansion. "Their arguments seemed logical, at least to me," said the House Vice-chair. "They had a very critical view of how the government elite in Ukraine behaved to the Russian minority," he added. In Slovakia, he said, the problem is only discussed from the Ukrainian point of view, but he calls for objective information from the other side as well. "On the other hand, of course, there was also the question of whether it was necessary to resolve it through a military conflict and the beginning of what they call a special military operation, which has already brought an enormous number of casualties on both sides," Gaspar stated. Gaspar and Danko don't understand the hysteria surrounding their trip to Moscow, rejecting the idea that the visit would pull Slovakia into Russia's sphere of influence. lin/mcs