As Slovakia wants to continue to buy Russian oil, despite the pressures put by Trump. Fico: “We simply have no other options”

Slovakia hopes to find a “common land” with the United States after the pressures exerted by Washington to stop energy acquisitions in Russia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Thursday, however, defending her country with resources from Moscow, writes Reuters.

The European Union has tried to isolate Russia because of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and gradually eliminate Russian fuel purchases that can generate income for war. US President Donald Trump also said he wants the community block to cease energy purchases in Russia.

However, Slovakia and Hungary have constantly defended their purchases of Russian oil and gases and state that the alternatives are expensive and uncertain.

In a session of questions and answers with the parliamentarians from Bratislava, Fico said on Thursday that Slovak's oil and gas purchases represent 2% of Russia's revenues from these sources and “have no impact on the financing of the war.”

“The problem of oil and gas in Slovakia is not a matter of support of the war. It is not an ideological issue that we can solve with alternatives in 15 seconds,” said Fico.

“It is a geographical problem, we simply have no other options,” added the Slovak Prime Minister.

Fico said that changing technologies to adapt to different sources is expensive, and transport fees are much higher than for Russian fuel. He also showed that Slovakia does not have access to gas terminals.

As for alternative oil routes, Fico said that the Adriatic Sea gas pipeline is not technologically tested.

“With the necessary diversification, it is of course necessary to maintain oil imports from the Russian Federation and I think we will find a common ground with the US administration, which gradually creates pressure in the opposite direction,” said Fico.

On Wednesday night, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban wore a telephone conversation with Trump, in which energy security in Central Europe was one of the discussion topics.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said before that Hungary's energy supply cannot be guaranteed without Russian gas and oil imports.

“For us, the supply of energy is a purely physical issue,” said the head of Hungarian diplomacy. “It can be nice to dream of buying oil and gas from somewhere (apart from Russia), but we can only buy where we have infrastructure,” added the Budapest official.

Peter Szijjarto's statements came after Trump has conditioned the new sanctions against Russia from NATO disconnection since the Russian energy supply.

“I am ready to impose major sanctions to Russia when all NATO countries will agree and start doing the same thing and when all NATO countries will stop buying oil from Russia,” Trump said on his social media platform.