PRAGUE, March 20. /TASS/. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has called for lifting sanctions against Russia.

"Sanctions have not helped anyone," he said during a show at the Bratislava’s TA3 TV channel. "Russia is not our problem. Our main problem is what is going to happen to the EU."

According to him, some Slovak politicians try to displace actual foreign policy issues with less important ones by drawing society’s attention to them. In this connection, Fico mentioned a statement made by Slovak President Andrej Kiska in which he slammed the position of the country’s prime minister and his cabinet members who questioned the viability of the European Union’s sanctions on Russia.

Fico said that Slovakia’s foreign policy was based on two things: first, on the EU membership and second, on NATO membership. "One the other hand, we sometimes have a need to fight for our national interests in Brussels," he said.

These interests, in Fico’s words, stipulate lifting sanctions against Russia and opposing the implementation of the Nord Stream 2 project. This project will damage Slovakia’s economy as the country will lose a large part of the gas transit revenue, the country’s prime minister noted.