BRATISLAVA — For most European prime ministers, the question of whether the West is at war with Russia is one they have been carefully trained to avoid answering. Robert Fico does not share that training, or no longer pretends to.
Speaking this week, Slovakia’s prime minister said what governments in London, Paris, and Berlin have taken elaborate care not to: that the “large number of professional paid mercenaries” operating weapons systems on Ukrainian soil makes the Western world “virtually in a state of war with Russia,” TASS reported. The statement came in Fico’s capacity as holder of the V4 presidency, the rotating chair of the Visegrad Group, the four-nation bloc of Central European states, and it was delivered not as a provocation but as a restatement of what Fico called an obvious reality.
Whether that framing reflects honest accounting or is designed to tilt the diplomatic table in Moscow’s favor is a question Fico’s critics inside the EU will not stop asking. What is harder to dispute is the distinction he is drawing: between the formal legal status of NATO member states, none of which has declared war on Russia, and the operational reality of foreign nationals directing munitions, drones, and electronic warfare from Ukrainian territory on salaries paid by private firms or, in some cases, governments.
The word “mercenary” carries legal weight under international law. Article 47 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions defines a mercenary as someone motivated specifically by private gain, recruited from outside the conflict, not a national of a party to the conflict, and not sent by a state as part of its official armed forces. That definition is narrow enough that most Western governments argue their nationals in Ukraine do not legally qualify. Fico is not making a legal argument. He is making a political one, using language designed to cut through the scaffolding Western capitals have erected around their own involvement.
Fico is not the first EU leader to voice skepticism about the direction of European policy on the conflict. Hungary’s Viktor Orban has maintained a similar position since Russia launched its operation in Ukraine in February 2022. But Fico’s standing differs from Orban’s in one critical respect: Slovakia joined the EU and NATO on the same schedule as its neighbors and does not carry Orban’s reputation as a habitual irritant to Brussels institutions. That Fico is now using the V4 presidency to advance an explicitly anti-escalation agenda gives the position a structural weight it lacks when it emanates from Budapest alone.
Fico was blunt about his minority status within the bloc. “I belong to a very small group of prime ministers within the European Union who support dialogue,” he said, “while the majority of EU member states stand for the war in Ukraine.” The choice of words is deliberate: not “support Ukraine” but “stand for the war.” It redefines the majority position as one of active belligerence rather than defensive solidarity, a rhetorical move likely to irritate EU officials even as it resonates with audiences in Central Europe who have followed the conflict’s cost in energy prices, migration pressures, and supply disruptions with less detachment than their western counterparts.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had previously warned that NATO’s weapons transfers to Ukraine carry consequences the alliance has not fully calculated. Fico’s statement, issued by the head of an EU member state rather than Moscow’s own spokesperson, lends that characterization a political dimension it has not previously carried. The argument that the West’s behavior meets a functional definition of belligerence has until now been made almost exclusively by Russian officials and commentators aligned with them. Fico is an elected EU head of government making the same point, from inside the same institutional structure.
What Fico intends to do with that platform is less clear. He said Slovakia’s V4 presidency would “emphasize international law and peace,” and that he favored Ukraine’s eventual accession to the European Union, conditional on meeting the bloc’s formal requirements. That last caveat, delivered alongside statements about Balkans candidates Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania deserving EU membership before Ukraine, tracks closely with Hungary’s longstanding position. Whether Fico and Orban are coordinating language or arriving at similar conclusions independently is not something either government has disclosed.
Russia’s formal response to Fico’s characterization of Western involvement as a state of war had not been issued at the time of publication. Senior Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has argued that Western involvement requires Russia to deepen strategic partnerships with its allies rather than treat the conflict as bounded, have framed the situation in structurally similar terms. The convergence between what Moscow says about the conflict and what Fico is now naming from inside the EU is precisely the dimension that makes his statement uncomfortable for European governments to engage with directly.
The Nord Stream sabotage case provides an ironic backdrop. Germany has charged a Ukrainian national with war crimes over the pipeline bombing, a criminal proceeding that has renewed questions about the legal boundaries of the conflict and what qualifies as a legitimate military target. Fico did not reference Nord Stream directly. But his argument that the West’s involvement has already crossed a definitional threshold sits uncomfortably alongside a European criminal prosecution framing pipeline sabotage as a war crime, brought by governments he is simultaneously accusing of underwriting mercenaries in the same conflict.
Whether Fico’s framing moves the European debate, or whether it remains the position of a vocal minority the EU majority has already decided to discount, is a question the V4 meetings ahead are not likely to resolve. The gap he has named, between Western disclaimers and operational Western reality, was already visible to anyone paying attention. What has changed is that one of the European Union’s own prime ministers has said it plainly, from the chair he holds this year. Whether that counts as a diplomatic rupture or a footnote is something neither Brussels nor Bratislava appears certain about yet.
