Author: Gabriel Gavin, Tom Nicholson

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico held one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday as part of a bid to secure continued access to cheap Russian fossil fuels. Fico’s decision to travel to Russia for trade talks will prove controversial among his fellow EU leaders, and defies the bloc’s public commitments to end its reliance on Moscow for gas imports. Fico said in a post on Facebook that he and Putin had “exchanged views on the military situation in Ukraine, the possibility of an early peaceful end to the war, and mutual relations between the Slovak Republic and the…