Peter Pellegrini was elected Slovakia’s president in a boost to Russia-friendly Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has been a staunch opponent of military aid to Ukraine.

More than 400,000 households, mostly in the northeastern Kharkiv region, were without electricity after an overnight Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s energy ministry said in an emailed statement.

Russia says Macron’s hawkish statements pose ‘strategic problem’

Alexey Meshkov, Russia’s ambassador to France, said French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent hawkish commentary on Russia posed “a serious strategic problem”.

Asked what would happen if France were to send troops to Ukraine, Meshkov said that “the absence of clearly defined red lines and the persistence of strategic ambiguity lead each side to assume the worst.

“I’m not suggesting that Russia intends to declare war on France, but it’s clear that there’s a serious strategic problem arising from this kind of thinking,” he told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday.

Meshkov said the presence of French soldiers in Ukraine “could pose a threat to themselves” and that a small number of “French mercenaries” had already died in the war.

Macron left the door open to sending French combat troops to Ukraine in a response to a Bloomberg News question in February.

The suggestion has since earned recriminations from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as well as US officials, who said privately that such a move risked fomenting a broader clash with Moscow.

The French president said his comments were designed to keep President Vladimir Putin guessing about what Europe’s response could be to Russian escalation in Ukraine. Macron said current discussions were focused on sending personnel for demining or training.

France and Germany also recently agreed to join forces to produce ammunition in Ukraine.

Read more: Macron wants to run EU’s foreign policy. Not everyone agrees

The Meshkov interview came after France’s Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu spoke to his Russian counterpart last week for the first time since October 2022.

Ally of Russia-friendly leader wins presidential election in Slovakia

Peter Pellegrini was elected Slovakia’s president in a boost to Russia-friendly Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has been a staunch opponent of military aid to Ukraine.

Pellegrini, parliament speaker and a member of Fico’s ruling coalition, won 53.1% of the vote, beating pro-European Union diplomat Ivan Korcok, according to official results published on Sunday.

The presidential victory will strengthen forces within the EU that oppose sending more weapons for Kyiv at a time when it appears increasingly outgunned by Russia following two years of fighting. 

During the campaign, Pellegrini accused Korcok, who advocated supporting Ukraine, of wanting to drag the country into war. The new head of state will now represent Slovakia at the meetings of leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

“I’ll do everything to ensure that Slovakia remains on the side of peace and not war, and let anyone criticise me for it if they want,” Pellegrini told reporters in Bratislava after announcing his victory.

Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto congratulated Pellegrini with a statement calling his election win a boost to “pro-sovereignty and pro-peace forces”.

Since returning to power last year, Fico has aligned himself with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as the most pro-Russia leader in the region. He has irked the EU’s mainstream and its allies by criticising Nato and saying he intends to normalise ties with Moscow.

Russian drone strikes cut power, Zelensky calls east ‘stable’

More than 400,000 households, mostly in the northeastern Kharkiv region, were without electricity following an overnight Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s energy ministry said in an emailed statement. 

Moscow’s forces struck Kharkiv again on Sunday as it continued almost daily attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city. 

Equipment was damaged at high-voltage substations in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, and high-voltage lines in the Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolayiv regions were switched off as an emergency precaution. 

Ukraine planned to import electricity on Sunday, the ministry said.  

Ukrainian Air Defence said it shot down all 17 Shahed-type drones launched overnight from occupied Crimea toward the central and eastern regions.

Separately, port infrastructure in Odesa on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast was damaged by a Russian ballistic missile strike late on Saturday, with one person injured.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine’s east remained difficult but stable in an interview with the Unified News telethon on Saturday. DM