Slovakia has a strong interest in ensuring transit of Russian gas and oil via Ukraine

Robert Fico, the Prime Minister of Slovakia, said that the country has a great interest in continuing the flow of oil and gas from Russia through Ukraine to the West. He added that the European Commission was putting pressure on the country to stop these supply flows.

Fico said to reporters that the Slovak government and Ukrainian cabinet would meet on Monday.

Due to Ukraine's ongoing war against Russia, the central European nation faces disruptions in its key Russian energy supply.

Ukraine has said that it will not renew its gas transit agreement with Russia by the end of this year.

Fico claimed that alternative routes are too expensive, and Slovakia wants to remain as a transit nation.

He said that the European Commission was under great pressure to ensure that no money came from the east.

In early 2014, Slovakia and Hungary saw their Russian oil supply cut off after Ukraine blocked Lukoil from entering the country. The group was placed on a list of sanctions.

The disruption was resolved when the Hungarian oil group MOL (which owns refineries and pipelines in Hungary and Slovakia) reached agreements with suppliers and operators of the pipelines under which it assumed ownership of the crude volumes at the Belarus/Ukraine border. (Reporting from Jan Lopatka in Prague and Jason Hovet; editing by Hugh Lawson).

(source: Reuters)