(Reuters) -Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will hold bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at China’s World War Two anniversary celebrations in Beijing this week, Fico said on Monday.
He will then meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in eastern Slovakia on Friday, he said in a statement.
Fico, who leads a NATO and EU member country but has opposed Western sanctions on Russia, has had tense relations with Zelenskiy and broken ranks with European allies. He met with Putin in Moscow in December.
Fico will also be the only European Union country leader to attend the celebrations in Beijing, where Xi will be flanked by Putin and also the leaders of North Korea, Iran, and Myanmar in a show of solidarity against the West.
“I respect every single victim of the fight against fascism, therefore I have in the past stood with respect in front of memorials in Moscow, Normandy, or Washington,” Fico said in an emailed statement.
“I personally regret, and I admit I do not understand why, that from among EU countries, only Slovakia will be present in Beijing. New world order is being built, new rules of multipolar world, new balance of powers, which is extremely important for stability in the world.”
He said it was necessary to use the opportunity to meet world leaders, and that he had informed EU representatives about his trip.
He did not further specify the agenda of his meetings in Beijing nor the meeting with Zelenskiy.
Slovakia lashed out at Ukraine when it did not renew a contract to ship Russian gas to Slovakia after the old one expired at the end of last year, forcing Slovakia to use alternative routes for Russian gas and look for other suppliers.
Slovakia has also been keen to keep imports of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline running through Ukraine, which were temporarily halted in the past two weeks after Ukrainian attacks on the pipeline in Russia.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague, Editing by William Maclean, Rod Nickel)
