West Aims to ‘Bring Russians to Their Knees’: Slovak PM
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The West is deliberately fueling the fighting in Ukraine because its ultimate goal is to weaken Russia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said.
In an interview with Slovak broadcaster STVR on Sunday, Fico expressed concern over the EU’s increasing involvement in the ongoing hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, arguing that the conflict cannot be resolved on the battlefield, RT reported.
“There is a military conflict in a neighboring country where Slavs are killing each other, and Europe is significantly supporting this killing, which I just don’t understand,” Fico said. He added that the fighting “continues only because it is being strongly supported by the West.”
“The sooner it ends, the better it will be,” he stressed, arguing that Western efforts to use the conflict to inflict a defeat on Russia will fail.
“Everyone thinks that through Ukraine we will bring the Russians to their knees, but this Russophobia does not work. It turns out that this problem cannot be solved militarily,” Fico stated.
Fico, a longtime critic of Western military aid to Kiev, promised to block Ukraine from ever joining NATO. Doing so could prepare the way for a world war, he argued.
After winning the parliamentary election last year, Fico’s Smer-SD party halted deliveries of weapons to Ukraine and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. He promised to restore trade and political ties with Moscow once the fighting ends, arguing that “the EU needs Russia, and Russia needs the EU.”
Moscow has warned against Western aid to Kiev, saying no amount of foreign support will change the outcome of the conflict.