Fico: Gas Situation Absurd, Europe Must Renew Transit Through Ukraine

Bratislava, February 28 (TASR) - The current gas situation following Ukraine's decision to stop its gas transit to Europe is absurd, as there's no solution more sensible for Europe than to restore the transit across Ukraine's soil, Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) stated in his social media post on Friday. In Fico's view, the decision taken by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discontinue the transit has hurt the entire Europe and Ukraine, but not Russia. Furthermore, Ukraine's own demand for gas only serves to exacerbate the gas crisis in Europe and takes advantage of the European law, which forces owners of the EU pipelines to transport the European gas to Ukraine. "This way foreign traders push gas from Europe to Ukraine, also via Slovakia. And take a guess as to what European gas this is? Of course, it's Russian, which comes to Europe via Turkstream or as LNG because Russia is the second largest LNG gas supplier in Europe after the United States. Hence, Ukraine buys Russian gas, pays for it and in this way finances the military expenditure of Russia," said Fico. Fico believes that Russia is raking in significant profits at the moment, also because of the currently soaring gas prices, which have been driven up by Zelenskyy's decision. The Slovak Prime Minister also lambasted the stance of the European Commission, which, in his view, is has chosen to do nothing but observe the situation from a back seat. mf