© Petr David Josek/APSlovak Prime Minister Robert Fico
Funding and arming Ukraine is a "futile waste of human resources and money" that will serve only to fill Ukrainian cemeteries with "thousands of dead soldiers," Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico wrote in an op-ed on Tuesday. Fico's article was a rebuttal to his country's president, who has urged him to send weapons to Kiev.
Following his party's electoral victory in September, Fico immediately cut off Slovakia's military aid to Ukraine and vowed to block Kiev's accession to NATO. Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, however, has called for Ukraine to be given "the means needed to defend itself," while pro-Western pundits in Slovakia have accused Fico of cozying up to the Kremlin.
Fico wrote in Slovakia's Pravda newspaper:
"I will no longer be subject to stupid liberal and progressive demagoguery. It is literally shocking to see how the West has repeatedly made mistakes in assessing the situation in Russia."Despite pumping Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars' worth of weapons and sanctioning Moscow's economy. He explained:
"Russia completely controls the occupied territories militarily, Ukraine is not capable of any meaningful military counter-offensive, [and] it has become completely dependent on financial aid from the West with unforeseeable consequences for Ukrainians in the years to come.Should the West continue along the path desired by Caputova, Fico predicted:
"The position of the Ukrainian president is shaken, while the Russian president increases and strengthens his political support. Neither the Russian economy nor the Russian currency collapsed, [and] anti-Russian sanctions have increased the internal self-sufficiency of this huge country."
"In two or three years we will still be where we are now. The EU alone will be perhaps 50 billion euros lighter, and in Ukraine, cemeteries will be full with thousands more dead soldiers."Fico's Slovak Social Democracy (SMER-SD) faction currently leads a three-party coalition government, while Caputova is the co-founder of the Progressive Slovakia party. Caputova's role as president is largely ceremonial, and Fico claimed in his op-ed that she is "impatiently waiting" for the end of her term this year so that she can re-enter parliamentary politics.
Fico has labeled Caputova an "American agent" on several occasions. After consulting the American Embassy in Bratislava last summer, Caputova sued Fico over the remarks, Slovakia's SITA news agency reported.
However, what is disappointing is that he criticizes US/NATO/EU policies of supporting Ukraine militarily, not for reasons of principle, but because they have failed to work. Not even the more intelligent "leaders" who oppose the continuation of the war in Ukraine have the integrity to also acknowledge that this conflict did not "just happen", but is a war of choice instigated by the US starting in the '90s, which virtually all members of NATO & the EU voluntarily participated in through co-ordinated actions supporting US policy to bring down Russia for the past thirty years.
All the negative impacts that have accrued (and will continue to accrue) to the US and NATO/EU countries due to their policies vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia are entirely self-inflicted and well-deserved.