April 4, Pozirk. The European Union ambassadors accredited in Slovakia refused to participate in the wreath-laying ceremony because the invitation was also extended to Russian and Belarusian diplomats, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said, describing the incident as “outrageous” on Facebook.
The event commemorating the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Bratislava from the Nazis was scheduled to take place on April 4 at the Slavin Memorial in Bratislava, where thousands of Soviet Army soldiers who helped liberate the city had been buried.
Laying wreaths is the least that can be done to commemorate the suffering caused by fascism, Fico stressed.
Fico, a controversial politician of the left-wing Smer party, became prime minister after an early parliamentary election in late September 2023.
He is known for publicly opposing military assistance to Ukraine. However, on February 1, Bratislava sided with the EU decision to allocate €50 billion to Ukraine over the next three years.
After Russia launched a full-scale war on Ukraine with the support of authorities in Minsk, many democratic countries preferred not to invite Belarusian and Russian diplomats to events, including the Nobel Prize award ceremony, commemoration of the victims of the atomic bombings in Japan or the anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora and Auschwitz concentration camps.
