Fico hints Slovakia will not aid NATO allies if a wider war breaks out

Filed 41m ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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Marty Gots a Plan

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said in a September 17 speech that while Slovakia respects its NATO membership, he would resist the country being pulled into a wider conflict via Article 5, citing what he called loud, bellicose rhetoric in Europe. He said the threat of pan-European war has never felt as serious as it does now.

Fico's remarks come amid a run of Russian hybrid incidents across the continent: a drone strike near a passenger train close to the Polish border, signal flares fired at a Danish helicopter, a Russian drone downed over Lithuania near a hydroelectric plant, and repeated drone incursions into Moldova, Romania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland. He is scheduled to travel to Ukraine the same week to meet President Zelenskyy and Ukraine's new prime minister at a regional summit.

The Institute for the Study of War suggested the Yahodyn-Dorohusk strike may have been aimed at officials transiting the Ukraine-Poland border, while CNN reported Moscow's hybrid campaign is designed to stay just below the threshold that would force a NATO military response.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A member of a defense pact announcing ahead of time which parts of the pact he won't honor is a strange way to keep a pact. It's a bit like paying dues to the volunteer fire department and then mentioning, real casual, that you might not show up if the fire's too big. The other twenty-nine members might want to ask him about that over coffee before, not after, the barn's already burning.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: Marty Gots a Plan · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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