Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has provoked a bitter spat with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over Kyiv's refusal to renew a contract to carry Russian gas into Europe that expired at the end of last year.

Fico caused shock in December when he visited Moscow and was photographed smiling alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin — who he said has been "wrongly demonized" by the West — in the hope of keeping cheap energy flowing to Slovakia.

Fico's bullish antics have annoyed both Kyiv and Slovakia's EU partners.

At home, fury has been building, exacerbating a crisis in the governing coalition and encouraging Slovakia's squabbling pro-Western opposition parties to come together in a bid to unseat him.

Although Ukraine's decision to halt the transit of Russian gas was no surprise, it still hit Slovakia hard.

Transit fees from the Eustream pipeline, which for years collected Russian gas at the Ukraine-Slovak border and carried it to Austrian hubs, was feeding Bratislava an estimated — and much-needed — €500 million ($524 million) annually.

Nevertheless, Fico — like Slovakia's previous dysfunctional pro-Western government — has done nothing to diversify the country's gas supply, which remains dependent on Russian imports.

This is in contrast to most other EU member states, which have

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