According to the NYT, the Slovak presidential election was spied on as a test of the distribution of forces between political camps with significantly different views on Russia. The paper points out that Pellegrini is against providing military and financial aid to Ukraine, while the defeated former foreign minister Ivan Korčok has steadfastly supported Ukraine.
According to the AP agency, critics of the Slovak government supported by Pellegrini they fear that Slovakia under Fico will abandon its pro-Western course and Hungary, led by populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, will follow. According to the BBC, before Fico’s government took office, Slovakia was one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies. When Pellegrini replaces Zuzana Čaputová as president, Ukraine will definitely lose its supporting vote in this EU and NATO member country, adds the British news station.
The French newspaper Le Monde also writes about the likely next president as a populist candidate. The fact that Pellegrini is skeptical about helping Ukraine was also noticed by the British newspaper The Guardian.
Russians write about a peaceful candidate
In Slovakia, the presidential candidate rejecting the supply of weapons to Ukraine and supporting a quick resolution of the conflict won, Russian media write. “Pellegrini advocates end to fighting in Ukraine,” wrote the Russian agency RIA Novosti, recalling that the newly elected president “showed concern” regarding the supply of ammunition to Kiev. The TASS agency identified Pellegrini for “supporters of a quick resolution of the conflict in Ukraine”.
The Interfax agency, on the other hand, highlighted the attitudes of the defeated former head of Slovak diplomacy, Ivan Korčok, who, according to it, stands for international issues “openly pro-Western position”. She also quoted Prime Minister Fico, in whose party Smér-social democratie (Smér-SD) Pellegrini served for two decades in the past and who called the new president someone who values peace.
Moscow, whose troops invaded Ukraine in 2022 to start a large-scale military conflict, says it is willing to negotiate peace with Kyiv if realistic demands are made. However, Ukraine repeatedly warns that in possible peace talks he refuses to compromise on his demands – including the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory and the restoration of the country’s borders as they were in 1991, i.e. including the Crimean Peninsula. Russia annexed it in violation of international law already in 2014.
Russia, which has annexed four Ukrainian regions to its territory in addition to Crimea, rejects these demands. For Kyiv, talks about a peaceful solution to the conflict are support for the Kremlin’s agenda.
Ukrainian media are cautious in their assessment of Pellegrini. They mention his attitudes especially in connection with Ficowhom the newspaper Ukrainska pravda called “anti-Ukrainian”.
“Pellegrini shares the position of the Slovak government regarding the normalization of relations with Russia,” notes the Ukrinform agency, according to which Pellegrini is also an opponent of Western anti-Russian sanctions.
The Unian agency provided an overview of Pellegrini’s statements about Ukraine and recalled, among other things, that the newly elected president demanded “an immediate end to the fighting and the start of peace talks” in the pre-election debates.
