Originally Posted by
MaxQ
Hungary's Orban is overtly anti-Ukraine and anti-European Union.
Orban is openly pro-Putin, and has been since taken a large bribe in Duetsch Marks from Russia when he was still a political novice.
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As he has done for some time now, Fico is acting as Orban’s wingman by offering support on both a moral and practical level. Crucially, he is blocking unanimous agreement at European Council meetings on any potential counter measures against the Hungarian government, so allowing it to continue the confrontation.
It is far from the first time that the nationalist-populist Slovak premier has broken ranks with the EU to push a pro-Russian stance.
Fico has spent the past two and a half years bickering with Zelensky, and has consistently sought to complicate EU efforts to support Kyiv. And like Orban’s government, his coalition has done little to diversify Slovakia’s oil and gas away from Russian supplies.
In 2025, Slovakia
vetoed the bloc’s 18th package of sanctions against Russia, only lifting it after Brussels promised to address with some of Bratislava’s concerns, including EU plans to bar all Russian energy imports and phase out sales of petrol and diesel vehicles.
An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.
Walter Lippmann