Slovakia restores military ties with Russia for first time since 2022

Slovakia, a member of both the European Union and NATO, has restored military-diplomatic ties with Russia for the first time since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, according to Index.hr, Danas and Dnevnik.hr, citing Deutsche Welle. The government of Prime Minister Robert Fico has sent Brigadier General Slavomir Staviarsky and his deputy, Colonel Ivo Gahir, to Moscow, and Bratislava is preparing to receive a Russian military attache in return.

General Staviarsky has been in Moscow since early August, Slovak public broadcaster STVR reported. Slovak military intelligence said his role is to assess the security and military-political situation in Russia and report back to the defence ministry, according to Index.hr.

The move follows a meeting between Fico and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in May, at which Fico said he wanted relations between the two countries to go beyond energy cooperation and signalled steps toward restoring military attaches, Danas reported. The Slovak news site Aktuality.sk reported the appointments on 8 October, and the officers appear on the defence ministry's published list of military diplomats serving abroad.

Opposition figures cited by Aktuality.sk named the incoming Russian officer as Maksim Verezan, saying he has Slovak approval but has not yet appeared on the list of accredited military attaches. The defence ministry has not said when he is expected to arrive in Bratislava, according to Index.hr.

Former Slovak lawmaker Martin Poliacik, of the opposition Progressive Slovakia party, told Deutsche Welle that one additional military attache does not change the broader picture, but that the appointment itself sends a political signal that should concern Slovakia's NATO allies.

Retired Lieutenant General Pavel Macko, a former deputy chief of the Slovak general staff and former senior Slovak general in NATO command structures, called it "a very serious step" by the Fico government, saying nothing had changed since 2022 and that Russian hostile activity against Slovakia and its neighbours was continuing, according to Index.hr. He pointed to a foiled arson attempt at a Ukrainian-owned drone factory in eastern Slovakia and suspected links between Russian-run operations and incidents in Munich and Leipzig.

Richard Gluck, a lawmaker from Fico's Smer party and chair of parliament's defence and security committee, defended the move, noting that the United States, Britain and France all keep military diplomats in Moscow and arguing that Slovakia's earlier withdrawal had cost it information, Danas reported. The move revives memories of a 2021 espionage case involving Sergei Solomasov, then a deputy military attache at the Russian embassy in Bratislava, who was filmed recruiting and paying a Slovak associate of a pro-Russian website; Solomasov was expelled in 2022 and the Slovak associate was later convicted of espionage and bribery.