Key news to follow:
1. SaS takes Fico to the prosecutor over the Ukraine power cut — and calls it treason
2. Fico-Zelensky call ends in a blame game over the Druzhba stalemate
3. Behind Bratislava’s pivot: elections, Orbán, and the end of dialogue with Kyiv
Analysis:
Slovakia’s liberal opposition party SaS announced on 24 February its intention to file criminal complaints against Prime Minister Robert Fico over his decision to halt emergency electricity deliveries to Ukraine. Party chair Branislav Gröhling listed a broad set of potential charges, including abuse of public office, treason, and a terrorist act. SaS MP Karol Galek was particularly direct, accusing Fico of opening a new front against Ukraine on Putin’s side and warning that cutting power could leave Ukrainian hospitals without electricity during surgeries on the war-wounded. Ukraine’s grid operator Ukrenergo stated the suspension of Slovak emergency supplies would have no material impact on its unified power system.
Following a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on 27 February, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico posted on X that Kyiv was not genuinely interested in restoring Russian oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline. Fico claimed Zelensky “had declined to allow a joint Slovak-Hungarian inspection commission access to Ukrainian territory”, citing intelligence services’ concerns, and that Kyiv had also blocked the Slovak ambassador and an EU representative from conducting an on-site check. Fico did, however, accept Zelensky’s offer to hold bilateral talks on Druzhba repairs, instructing his Foreign Ministry to find a suitable date, while making clear he preferred the meeting to take place in an EU member state rather than Ukraine. The dispute continues to have wider EU consequences: Bratislava and Budapest jointly blocked the 20th EU sanctions package against Russia, and Hungary separately held up a €90 billion EU credit for Ukraine.
International observers more often highlight that Fico’s increasingly confrontational posture toward Ukraine goes well beyond the immediate pipeline dispute and reflects a deliberate medium-term political strategy. Until recently, Fico had maintained a working relationship with Kyiv – military contracts continued, humanitarian aid flowed, and Bratislava refrained from blocking Ukraine’s EU membership path. That pragmatism has now all but evaporated. Slovak and Hungarian leaders have moved in near-perfect lockstep: co-blocking EU sanctions, jointly banning diesel fuel sales to Ukraine, while Fico went even further than Orbán by cutting emergency electricity exports. Two factors are cited. The departure of Miroslav Lajčák, Fico’s national security adviser and one of the few voices pressing for continued dialogue with Kyiv, removed a moderating influence, though Slovak political insiders caution against overstating it. More structurally, analysts from the Slovak Foreign Policy Association suggest Fico is building the foundations of his 2027 election campaign around anti-Ukrainian sentiment, mirroring and likely coordinating with Orbán’s strategy ahead of Hungary’s April 2026 parliamentary vote. Slovak opposition figures believe the Druzhba crisis is being used instrumentally to consolidate domestic opinion against Ukraine’s accelerated EU accession – a theme Fico intends to make central to his next electoral push.
Fico’s conduct this week is not a temporary overreaction to an energy dispute. It is a deliberate repositioning in which confrontation with Kyiv has become a domestic political asset rather than a liability. As long as that calculus holds, and there is little reason to expect it to change before April, Bratislava will continue to function as Budapest’s closest partner in eroding European solidarity with Ukraine from within.
Key news to follow:
1. Nearly two million shells in a year: Prague’s ammunition initiative reshapes Ukraine’s supply picture
2. Babiš draws a firm line on NATO spending — and dares allies to object
Analysis:
Czech National Security Adviser Hynek Kmoníček told a Senate hearing on 25 February that Ukraine received approximately 1.96 million large-calibre artillery rounds in 2025 through the Czech-led ammunition initiative – accounting for roughly 48% of all shell deliveries to Ukraine over the year. He added that funding has already been secured for around 880,000 rounds for 2026, and that Prague is actively seeking additional donors to raise between 2.5 and 5 billion Czech crowns. The figures are significant given that Prime Minister Andrej Babiš had promised before last year’s elections to scrap the initiative entirely, only to reverse course on the condition that other countries provide the financing. NATO has since confirmed that the Czech mechanism sourced substantially more rounds than initially projected.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš confirmed during an online interview on 27 February that his government has no plans to move toward the elevated defence spending targets set by NATO, flatly stating the country is “certainly not” on track toward the alliance’s 3.5% of GDP benchmark. Babiš, who won last year’s parliamentary election on a platform of improving living standards, framed the issue as a matter of domestic priorities, placing citizens’ health and quality of life first. The 2026 draft budget projects defence spending of 2.1% of GDP, down from the 2.35% planned by the previous centre-right cabinet, which had aimed to reach 3% by 2030. Former Prime Minister Petr Fiala pushed back publicly, arguing that security must remain a government priority. The tension is notable: Prague continues to run the shell initiative for Ukraine while simultaneously cutting its own military budget – a position that risks becoming harder to sustain as NATO allies ramp up spending.
The Czech Republic is sustaining Ukraine’s war effort with one hand while pulling back its own defence investment with the other. That is not a stable position. At some point, allies will start asking whether Prague’s commitment to the shell initiative reflects a genuine security calculus – or a convenient way to appear engaged without absorbing the full cost of what engagement actually requires.
Key news to follow:
1. Three years on, Nawrocki reminds Europe what happens when it ignores Moscow
2. Sikorski’s Sejm address: Poland must prepare for the kind of war Europe thought it had left behind
Analysis:
Polish President Karol Nawrocki used the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February to call on the democratic world not to overlook Moscow’s imperial ambitions. Writing on X, Nawrocki described Russian aggression against Ukraine as a serious threat to the entire European security architecture and drew on historical precedent: ignoring Russia’s expansionist drive, he wrote, has always ended in tragedy. He stressed the need for democratic unity in the face of such challenges and expressed Poland’s expectation that destabilising actions in the region must stop. The statement, calibrated in tone but firm in substance, signals the continued firmness of Poland’s political consensus on Ukraine – a contrast to the more ambivalent positions visible elsewhere in Central Europe.
Polish Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Radsław Sikorski delivered a notably direct speech in the Sejm on 26 February, urging Poland to prepare for the possibility of armed conflict on a scale its grandparents would recognise. Speaking before President Nawrocki, former President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and senior diplomats, Sikorski laid out a picture of mounting Russian pressure on NATO’s eastern flank – from drone incursions and railway sabotage to coordinated disinformation campaigns designed to blame Ukraine and the alliance. He cited European intelligence assessments suggesting Russia could be willing to test NATO members militarily in the near future, and argued Poland cannot afford to treat the war as someone else’s problem. Sikorski personalised the stakes by recalling the death of a seven-year-old Polish girl, Amelia, killed alongside her mother in Ternopil. He warned that a Russian victory over Ukraine would not reduce the threat to Europe – it would increase it, and called for resilience and unity rather than paralysis.
However, the real impact of Poland's position remains limited. The Trump administration has created a negotiation format that nearly excludes Europe, which Zelenskyy publicly lamented. Sikorski's statement, though resonant, does not change the reality where Washington controls negotiations with Moscow. IESS assesses Poland's position as an attempt to set standards for future European engagement rather than a tool for current influence. The effectiveness of this strategy will depend on European state consolidation, which has not yet observed due to divergences between Warsaw, Prague, and Bratislava.
Poland is the clearest case in the region of a government that has internalised the lesson of 2022 and is acting on it consistently. While Bratislava treats the Russian threat as a variable to be managed for domestic gain, Warsaw treats it as a fixed reality that demands a permanent response. That difference in orientation, not any particular policy decision, is what separates the two countries’ trajectories.