Slovakia Resists Trump’s Push to Quickly Quit Russian Oil

Slovakia has no plans to quickly abandon Russian oil supplies, President Peter Pellegrini told US President Donald Trump during talks in New York this week.

Trump has been pressing the European Union’s holdouts — Hungary and Slovakia — to end imports of Russian crude, arguing it would help choke off Moscow’s war funding and push President Vladimir Putin toward peace talks.

But Slovakia, a landlocked Eastern European country that borders Ukraine, is resisting, citing technological hurdles and limited capacity on alternative routes.

“If change is to come in the coming years, it’s called diversification,” Pellegrini told Trump when the pair met on Sept. 23 in New York, according to a statement emailed by the Slovakian leader’s office on Saturday.

“Slovakia needs three, four, five different sources of gas and energy. We cannot replace dependence on Russia with dependence on the United States,” he said, according to the statement.

Pellegrini said Slovakia cannot sufficiently diversify its energy suppliers on short order without technical and logistical support.

He described the meeting with Trump as constructive, with the US president listening to his arguments. “He had a smile on his face, but he told me directly: do something about it,” Pellegrini said.

Separately this week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pushed back against Trump over energy, saying that giving up Russian oil and gas would ruin the nation’s economy.

The European Union is considering trade measures to target its remaining Russian oil imports, Bloomberg reported on Sept. 20, citing people familiar with the plans.

Purchases from Russia amount to only 3% of EU crude oil imports against about 27% before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU estimated in May.

Trump has also pressed Turkey and India to stop buying oil from Russia.