However, the visit has gone down badly with opposition parties at home and with Slovakia’s neighbouring EU and Nato ally, the Czech Republic.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said his government had secured energy independence from Russia, and he was thinking of Ukrainians who could not spend Christmas with their loved ones because of Putin.
In Bratislava, Michal Simecka of Progressive Slovakia said Fico had made his country a tool for the Russian leader’s propaganda and his trip was a “disgrace for Slovakia and a betrayal of national interests”.
The Slovak Prime Minister said the meeting in Moscow was a reaction to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling EU leaders that Ukraine remained opposed to Russian gas being piped through its territory.
Fico, who survived being shot earlier this year, also said he had a “long conversation” with Putin and the two “exchanged views on the military situation in Ukraine”.
Both discussed “the possibilities of an early, peaceful end of the war” and mutual relations between Russia and Slovakia, Fico wrote on Facebook.