Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico stated that he has kept his promise to stop emergency electricity assistance to Ukraine if the country does not restore the transit of Russian oil through the “Druzhba” pipeline.
“I have fulfilled what I declared on Saturday: “If oil supplies to Slovakia are not restored by Monday, I will ask SEPS, the state-owned joint-stock company, to halt emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine,’” Fico said on X Monday evening.
He emphasized that in January 2026, these emergency supplies, needed to stabilize Ukraine’s power grid, were twice as large as the total for all of 2025.
Energy reform authorities contacted the transmission system operator NEC Ukrenergo for comment. According to inter-operator agreements, SEPS provides emergency assistance when internal generation resources are exhausted, using support from other countries as one of the mechanisms to balance the energy system.
Earlier, Fico had announced his intention to stop emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine if the country did not restore oil deliveries by Monday, February 23, following a disruption caused by an accident on the “Druzhba” pipeline near the Ukrainian city of Brody in Lviv region in January.
He also accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of allegedly “refusing to understand our peacekeeping approach” and therefore “acting maliciously toward Slovakia,” which, in his view, is being treated “as a hostile country.”
The transport of Russian crude oil through the “Druzhba” pipeline via Ukraine was halted at the end of last month due to large-scale Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
