Kyiv responds to Slovak PM who suggested concession against the territorial integrity of Ukraine

In response to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s proposal for a “territorial compromise” with Russia, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has stressed that this is out of the question.

Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, stressed that there can be no compromise on territorial integrity: neither for Ukraine, nor for Slovakia, nor any other country.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kyiv, Ukraine

The official added that Ukraine and its partners are making efforts to push the Russians out of temporarily occupied Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk so that they do not move further into the country and beyond, including into Košice, Presov and other Slovak lands.

Let's be honest: no security in Ukraine means no security in Slovakia or Europe as a whole. We must work together to bring Ukraine's victory closer.

Oleh Nikolenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine#apos;s Foreign Ministry

By way of background, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico is scheduled to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart Denys Shmyhal on Wednesday, 24 January, 2024. Ahead of the meeting, Fico made  controversial remarks.

The Slovak prime minister noted that he intends to announce at the meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Denys Shmyhal that he will block Ukraine’s accession to NATO via every method available to him.

Fico repeated Russian propaganda, saying that Ukraine was a state under “absolute US influence” and hinted that it would have to give up part of its territory to Russia.

“There has to be some kind of compromise, which will be very painful for both sides. What do they expect? The Russians to leave Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk? That’s not realistic,” Fico said.

Since 2017, human rights defenders from the Crimean Tatar Resource Center have recorded 9,006 violations of fundamental human rights in the temporarily occupied Crimea. The majority of these violations concern Crimean Tatars.

Crimean human rights defenders noted that after the occupation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, thousands of activists came under repression for their civic position. Criminal cases have been opened, detentions, searches and arrests are systematically carried out, and the people are forcibly disappeared. The indigenous Crimean Tatar people find themselves in a particularly difficult situation and are subject to repression.

The human rights community in Ukraine believes that the de-occupation of Crimea is necessary to stop the systematic and gross violations of human rights committed by the Russian Federation on the peninsula. They are urging other countries to support Ukraine with timely and sufficient supplies of weapons and military equipment.

Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly urged European countries to invest in their security by providing Ukraine’s Armed Forces with sufficient and timely weaponry.