Ukrainian parliamentary official wants ”foreign leader’s” visit cancelled after Slovak PM’s outrageous remarks about Ukraine

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Photo: Getty Images

Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Policy and Interparliamentary Cooperation, has demanded a robust response to remarks made by the “leader of another state” who has questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Source: a Facebook post by Merezhko, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The lawmaker said the state “must have some basic sense of self-respect”.

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“It is completely unacceptable to pretend that nothing is happening when a leader of another state makes remarks that call the sovereignty of the state into question. This is a red line that requires a decisive and unequivocal response, especially when the leader of the other state is making such disgraceful claims ahead of a visit to the state whose sovereignty he denies,” he said.

Merezhko added: “In such cases, the visit should be cancelled, and the Foreign Ministry should issue a statement to protect the sovereignty and honour of its state.”

The Ukrainian official wrote the post following the latest wave of anti-Ukrainian remarks from Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who is scheduled to visit Ukraine on Wednesday.

However, in comments under his post, Merezhko refused to either confirm or deny that he had formulated this demand in response to the Slovak prime minister’s remarks, stressing that it was his “general observation as a lawyer in the field of international law”.

Background:

• Fico said 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.
• 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 in every possible way.
• Previously, during a press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Fico reiterated his earlier claim that Russia’s war against Ukraine “has no military solution”.
• Later, he resorted to blatantly parroting the Russian propaganda narrative that the West had “forbidden the Ukrainian political leadership to conclude a truce” with Russia at the start of the full-scale invasion because it “relied on the idea that by pouring billions [of dollars] and weapons into Ukraine, Ukraine would deliver the wounded Russian bear on a plate”.

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