Fico pleads to remove Slovak citizen from EU sanctions list

11 months ago 51

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico wants to get a Slovak businessman linked to the pro-Kremlin biker group Night Wolves off the European sanctions list after being added for assisting the Kremlin’s interests.

“Mr Hambálek is a motorcycle lover, that is the only thing you can blame him for, nothing else,” said Fico. He plans to open the topic on Tuesday when he will be in Berlin, where he is due to meet with the German chancellor.

“I informed the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen that we will raise the issue of the citizen of the Slovak Republic, Mr Hambálek, who is the only EU citizen included on the sanctions list,” the prime minister said shortly after the end of the EU summit on Friday.

The EU put the Slovak businessman on the sanctions list in the summer of 2022.

“Jozef Hambálek is the president of the Europe chapter of the nationalist motorcycle club Nightwolves MC based in Slovakia. He can be connected to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and other representatives of the Russian government,“ the EU sanctions list reads.

Similarly, the US government accuses the Night Wolves of direct involvement in the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the separatists’ revolt in eastern Ukraine.

Russian leaders of the parent Night Wolves organisation presented Hambálek’s bikers’ clubhouse as their “European staff” in 2018. Hambálek met Putin in Crimea during the bikers’ show in August 2017.

Hambálek has long-term contacts with Smer politicians, especially with the Slovak Defense Minister Robert Kaliňák, both “passionate bikers”.

Fico’s plans to get Hambálek off the sanctions list came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin complimented his and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s political styles. On Thursday, he highlighted their independent and “pro-national“ approach.

“Fico and Orbán are not pro-Russian politicians, they are pro-national politicians protecting their interests. There are no such politicians any more, the rest depends on ‘the big brother’, the USA,” said Putin during his end-of-year press conference.

“After these words, it is clear to the whole world that Fico is putting Slovakia to shame with his attitude towards Russia’s criminal aggression,” said MEP and head of the Slovak delegation to the EPP Ivan Štefanec in response to Putin’s words.

(Natália Silenská | Euractiv.sk)