Slovakia Wants to Defend Nato's Eastern Flank, While Its PM Courts the Country Threatening It
In this week’s edition, you’ll read about:
Slovakia Wants to Defend Nato’s Eastern Flank, While Its PM Courts the Country Threatening It
Despite Presidential Veto, Poland Signs the SAFE Agreement
Is Slovenia Getting Its Own Orbán Into Power?
Slovakia Pitches to Patrol Baltic Skies With F-16s, Adding to Cocktail of Fico’s Government Messaging
Just as Slovak prime minister Robert Fico was preparing to fly to Moscow last week to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin for the 4th time since becoming PM in 2023, Slovak defence minister Robert Kaliňák was engaged in discussion with his Polish, Estonian, and Latvian counterparts in Warsaw.
Kaliňák announced that Slovakia is looking to participate in a mission it has never joined before: patrolling the skies over the Baltics.
The situation illustrates a schizophrenia in Slovak foreign policy. On the one hand, Fico continues to maintain close ties with Moscow, seeking to normalise trade and political relations with the country that launched a full-scale war against Slovakia’s neighbour Ukraine.
On the other hand, the Slovak defence industry has been exporting a record number of artillery shells, helping Ukraine maintain necessary ammunition levels - while making eye-watering profits for the manufacturers with political ties to Fico’s government.
Behind closed doors, the Slovak side is toeing the Nato line, and Bratislava’s military spending even reached two percent of its GDP in 2024, as required by Nato.
Meanwhile, Fico continues with ever stronger criticism of Ukraine, the EU, and the West, and boasts about the effectiveness of authoritarian regimes such as those in China, Vietnam, and Putin’s Russia.
Fico says war always comes from the West and peace always comes from the East.
It seems as if Slovak leaders always bend their positions to appease the audience they address, like a leaf in the wind, resulting in contradictory messaging.
Incidentally, it was the government led by Fico’s party Smer that ordered the 14 F-16 fighter jets from US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin in 2018.
Now that some of the jets have arrived, the defence minister seems to be looking for ways to put them to use.
“Slovakia wants to engage in regional security. Next year, we plan to participate for the first time in the Baltic Air Policing mission with our new F-16V aircraft. We also plan to deploy two Barak air defence system batteries as part of a rotational mechanism to strengthen the security of the Baltic States and the eastern flank,” Kaliňák said during a debate at the Defence24 conference in Warsaw on 6 May.
Kaliňák’s statement is surprising for several reasons, the Slovak daily Denník N writes. The Slovak air force still does not have all 14 of its ordered F-16s at home. Four remain in the US, where they are being used to train crews. Technical problems also continue to surface.
Protection of the Slovak airspace is currently being handled by the Czechs. Under current plans, Slovak pilots are due to begin assisting them as early as this spring, with full protection to be taken over only next year.
As Kaliňák later clarified, 2027 is not yet the year in which the fighter jets would physically fly over the Baltics. At this stage, he only wants to register for one of the available rotations.
Slovak fighter jets may begin patrolling Baltic airspace no earlier than the second half of 2028.
Despite Presidential Veto, Poland Signs the SAFE Agreement
Poland is the first country to sign an agreement under the EU SAFE, a programme of cheap loans for rearmament. It is also its largest beneficiary. The European Commission has allocated €43.7bn.
According to Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland will get the defence loans despite the veto, which President Karol Nawrocki used in March to torpedo the programme. The bill he stopped proposed the creation of a special fund to receive EU funds.
In response to the veto, the government adopted a resolution on the Polish Armed Forces Programme, authorising the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Finance and Economy to sign the agreement and documents regarding the SAFE loan on behalf of the government. The loan will be taken out by the Polish development bank BGK for the Armed Forces Support Fund.
The presidential veto did not prevent the loan itself, but made it difficult to use the funds, for example, to finance services subordinate to the Ministry of Interior and Administration or infrastructure investments. The funds allocated to the Fund for the State Security of the Armed Forces can only be used to modernise the Polish Armed Forces.
Is Slovenia Getting Its Own Orbán Into Power?
The heated parliamentary elections in Slovenia in March ended in a narrow-margin victory for the defending prime minister, Robert Golob.
However, he was not able to successfully form a government. Instead, Janez Janša, who has already ruled the country three times, is looking more than likely to get back into power.
Janša has been at the centre of the spy scandal during the campaign, involving the private Israeli intelligence service Black Cube, which also helped Viktor Orbán in his campaign in the past.
Janša has been known to be the more pro-Israeli candidate in the election race. He has also backed the pro-Russian politician Zoran Stevanović to become speaker of parliament. Despite this, Janša is most likely not going to be the next Orbán in the EU. Staunchly anti-communist, a dissident in the 1980s, firmly pro-Ukraine, and, while eurosceptic, he remains committed to staying within the centre-right European People’s Party orbit rather than breaking away, as Orbán did.
According to Euractiv, Janša’s euroscepticism is real, but it operates within bounds that Orbán has long since exceeded.
Sidenotes:
Romanian President Nicușor Dan and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed they will soon sign a bilateral security agreement through which Kyiv will transfer to the Romanian industry and armed forces the technical and tactical expertise obtained in four years of conventional war against the Russian Federation. (Defenceromania)
On Thursday last week, several Ukrainian drones entered Latvian airspace near the country’s eastern flank; two of them crashed, while another caused a brief fire at an oil depot. The event triggered a political firestorm, leading to the resignation of Latvia’s Defence Minister Andris Sprūds. (Euronews)