Kyiv’s NATO membership would ‘guarantee WW3,’ Slovak PM
Ukraine joining NATO would spark global conflict, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said Thursday, Politico reports.
“I understand Ukraine’s wishes, it is a sovereign country, but Ukraine’s membership in NATO is just a guarantee of World War III,” Fico said in a video on Facebook.
The comments came just hours after Slovakia’s delegation to the NATO summit in Washington supported a common stance that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path” to joining the alliance.
Fico added he had instructed Slovakia’s representatives at the summit to reiterate that Ukraine can only join NATO once it meets all the criteria for membership, and after all of the alliance’s member countries sign off.
Slovakia has been a member of NATO since 2004. Fico, who is in his fourth term as the country’s prime minister since 2006, has pledged to halt military aid to Ukraine and claimed there is “no war” in the capital, Kyiv.
He also said he “would have liked very much to have joined” Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán on his trip to Moscow last week to visit Russian President Vladimir Putin.
