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'I'm not friends with Putin and Xi... we're colleagues!' - Fico after Smer faces PES expulsion over Russia, China ties

'I'm not friends with Putin and Xi... we're colleagues!' - Fico after Smer faces PES expulsion over Russia, China ties

"Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico criticised the Party of European Socialists (PES) after it announced the exclusion of Smer this October. "The proposal for exclusion is the result of a long-term gradual distancing of the authentic Slovak left from Brussels' ideas about what values and priorities they should promote," he said during an address in Bratislava on Saturday.  The Slovak leader claimed that one of the main reasons for his party's suspension from the second-largest faction in the European Parliament was his attendance at the WWII Victory celebrations in Russia and China.  "Socialists cannot accept friends of Putin or the Chinese president. I am not friends with Putin and Xi Jinping; we are colleagues. And my duty is to meet with them," he stressed. Fico pledged to continue work with Beijing and Moscow and rejected the REPowerEU plan aimed at reducing Russian energy imports to the EU, noting that the initiative is largely based on 'dirty politics'. "It's not about any principles at all," he said. "At the end of the pipeline, you can face big problems. We cannot support repowering, and we will not do it." "We cannot agree with every nonsense. That is our sovereignty, that when something happens in the union, we come and say, we have a different opinion. And we have the right to a different opinion," he added. Both Slovakia and its fellow EU state member Hungary had long depended on Russian oil and gas, supplied mainly through Soviet-era pipelines such as the Druzhba oil pipeline.  Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Orban repeatedly opposed initiatives on phasing out Russian energy, warning that it would cause serious economic disruption. The European Union, however, continues to pursue ending its reliance on Russian fossil fuels under the REPowerEU strategy. Brussels defended these measures as necessary for Europe's long-term independence."