BRATISLAVA — Slovakia was not alone when it told the NATO summit in Ankara that it would provide no financial support for Ukraine’s armament, Slovak President Peter Pellegrini said Sunday, naming Hungary and the Czech Republic as governments that stated the same position at the negotiating table.
“I have noticed comments in Slovakia suggesting that because Slovakia clearly said it would not send weapons or assist financially in yet another round of arming Ukraine, it was isolated in that stance at the NATO summit. This is simply not the case,” Pellegrini said in remarks broadcast by TA3 television. He said Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar made his position clear and stated that Hungary would provide no military or financial assistance to Ukraine whatsoever. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said exactly the same, directly at the negotiating table. Other prime ministers also declined to participate in allocating the 70 billion euros, Pellegrini added, without naming them.
In the Ankara Summit Declaration, signed by all 32 NATO member states at the close of the July 7 and 8 summit, allies pledged to spend 70 billion euros on military equipment, assistance, and training for Ukraine in 2026, and to maintain their sovereign commitments at least at the same level in 2027. The 70 billion figure was the summit’s headline commitment on Ukraine.
What Pellegrini’s account adds is a distinction between joining a collective declaration and contributing to the specific financial allocation it announces. NATO consensus rules allow member governments to sign a joint text while holding separate national positions on individual commitments within it. The Ankara Declaration was unanimous; the financial participation, by his account, was not.
Slovakia’s position was not new. Prime Minister Robert Fico has consistently maintained that Slovakia should not fund another country’s war, a posture Bratislava stated publicly before arriving in Ankara. Pellegrini’s Sunday remarks were directed at domestic commentary that had framed Bratislava as isolated within the alliance. His response was to name Budapest and Prague as governments that expressed the same refusal at the table.
The political effect of the disclosure is to change the public record. Slovakia’s pre-summit opposition had been reported; its critics used it as evidence of outlier status. Naming Magyar and Babis as having said the same thing directly at the negotiating table transforms what looked like a unilateral Slovak position into a documented bloc with at least three members and unnamed others.
The Ankara Summit Declaration does not specify which member governments will contribute what share of the 70 billion euro total or on what timetable. The figure represents a collective NATO commitment; how it translates into binding national pledges when several governments have privately declined to participate is not addressed in the text.
What Pellegrini chose not to disclose is what his account leaves unresolved. He named Magyar and Babis; he acknowledged additional unnamed prime ministers without identifying them. The July 7 and 8 Ankara summit produced a declaration that reads as a unified alliance commitment to Ukraine. The private record at the table, by Pellegrini’s account, was narrower. How much narrower, he did not say.
