Humaira Pamuk
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio began a two-day trip to Eastern Europe on Sunday to strengthen ties with Slovakia and Hungary, two countries whose conservative leaders are often at loggerheads with other EU countries but close to President Donald Trump.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement last week that Rubio would use the trip to discuss energy cooperation and bilateral issues, including NATO commitments.
“These are countries that are very strong for us, very cooperative with the United States, very cooperative with us,” Rubio told reporters before departing for Europe on Thursday.
Rubio, who also serves as Trump’s national security adviser, met with Slovak President Peter Pellegrini when he arrived in Bratislava on Sunday, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state in seven years, and discussed energy and defense issues.
Pellegrini’s office said in a statement: “An important topic of the talks is… defense cooperation and the implementation of commitments made at the NATO summit.”
Rubio later met with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who visited Trump in Florida last month. The U.S. diplomat’s trip follows his attendance at the Munich Security Conference over the past few days.
Meeting with Orban on Monday
On Monday, Rubio is expected to meet with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, who trails in most opinion polls ahead of an April election in which he could be voted out of office.
“The president (Trump) has said he’s very supportive and so are we,” Rubio said before the trip. “But obviously we intend this visit to be a bilateral one.”
Orban is one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe and is seen by many on the US far right as a model for the US president’s hard-line policies on immigration, support for families and Christian conservatism. Budapest has hosted several Conservative Political Action Conference events that bring conservative activists and leaders together, and another event will be held in March.
Close ties with Moscow, clashes with EU
Fico and Orban have both clashed with EU institutions over investigations into rollbacks of democratic rules.
They have also maintained ties with Moscow, criticizing and at times delaying EU sanctions on Russia and opposing military aid to Ukraine.
While other EU countries have secured alternative energy supplies after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, including buying American gas, Slovakia and Hungary have continued to buy Russian gas and oil, a practice criticized by the United States.
Rubio said that would be discussed during his brief visit but gave no details.
Fico described the EU as an institution in “deep crisis” and heaped praise on Trump, saying he would bring peace to Europe.
But Fico criticized the United States for arresting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in early January.
Hungary and Slovakia have so far also departed from Trump’s demand that all NATO members significantly increase military spending to 5% of GDP and raised defense spending to NATO’s minimum threshold of 2%, a level lower than that of some other NATO members.
On nuclear cooperation, Slovakia signed an agreement with the United States last month, with Fico saying the U.S. company Westinghouse may build a new nuclear power plant.
(Reporting by Humela Pamuk, additional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague; Editing by Alexandra Hudson and Susan Fenton)
