Lithuania and Latvia Block Fico’s Flight Path to Moscow’s Victory Day Parade

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico announced on Sunday, April 19, that Lithuania and Latvia have refused to grant his aircraft passage through their airspace for his upcoming trip to Moscow on May 9.

In a video message posted on Facebook, Fico expressed frustration over the decision by the two EU member states to block the leader of another member state. “Lithuania and Latvia have already announced that they will not allow us to fly over their territory on the flight to Moscow,” Fico said, adding that he is confident he will find an alternative route, just as he did last year when Estonia imposed similar restrictions.

Fico’s decision to attend the “Victory Day” celebrations in the Russian capital continues to draw sharp criticism from Brussels. Last year, he ignored calls from senior European officials, including EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, to boycott the event in response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

This diplomatic friction follows a deepening of ties between Bratislava, Budapest, and Moscow. Fico has increasingly aligned himself with (former) Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, echoing hard-line stances against EU energy policies and sanctions.

Over the past year, Fico has described the EU’s efforts to phase out Russian energy as “energy suicide” and has filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice to challenge the ban on Russian gas imports.

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Hungary Says It Has Deal With Ukraine on Minority Rights, Ties It to EU Accession Talks

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar announced that Hungary and Ukraine have reached a “comprehensive agreement” to broaden language, cultural, educational and political rights for roughly 100,000 ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region, following several weeks of expert-level talks. Kyiv has pledged to write the agreed measures into Ukrainian law, reflecting them in the EU accession action plan. Budapest indicated it would support opening the first negotiating cluster for Ukraine.

The tension between Slovakia and its European partners is further exacerbated by Fico’s stance on the Druzhba pipeline. While Kyiv maintains that Russian strikes caused the ongoing infrastructure damage, Fico and Orbán have blamed Ukraine for the outage and threatened to reconsider aid to Kyiv.

Despite these disputes, Fico has remained steadfast in his desire for the “standardization of relations” with Russia, a position he reinforced during a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in September 2025.