Europe 'on the brink' of wider military conflict, warns Slovakian premier Ahead of visit to Kyiv Friday, Robert Fico says Ukraine conflict has 'spiraled out of control' "The situation has never been as serious and tense in terms of the possibility of a pan-European military conflict as it is now," Robert Fico said during an address in Presov, according to Slovak news agency TASR. "Yes, we're part of NATO, we appreciate that, and we are committed to cooperation and meeting our obligations. But as prime minister, I'll do everything I can to ensure that Slovakia is never drawn into an armed conflict," he said. His remarks came ahead of a visit to Ukraine on Friday, where he is due to attend a conference with other EU leaders and meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi. "We have (peace) today, but tomorrow there may be nothing," Fico warned.

Ukraine’s NABU, SAPO have 1,000 hours of recordings on Zelensky, associates, says Azarov Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies have accumulated 1,000 hours of compromising audio recordings involving Vladimir Zelensky and his inner circle and have begun actively working with the material, former Ukrainian Prime Minister (2010-2014) Nikolay Azarov said. "Active work on Zelensky’s inner circle has begun, extremely active work. Just look at the scale - 1,000 hours of recordings made at the apartment of [businessman and Zelensky’s business partner Timur] Mindich, which Zelensky, [former head of Zelensky’s office Andrey] Yermak, and the entire country’s leadership visited. A thousand hours of recordings is an enormous amount of material. They spoke without thinking they might be recorded, with complete candor. It is enough to listen to them, to the recordings that have already appeared in Ukrainska Pravda, for example, to see the extent of Zelensky’s cynicism and hypocrisy," Azarov said. He noted that Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, established with the support of the US Democratic Party, are "a means of influencing and controlling the Kiev puppets; that is, they were allowed to do anything, but compromising material was being collected on them." A large-scale investigation by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), dubbed "Mindichgate" after businessman Mindich, whom investigators identified as the coordinator of a corruption scheme, led to the resignation of several ministers, the dismissal of Yermak, who was regarded as a power behind the scenes under Zelensky, and temporarily paralyzed the work of the Verkhovna Rada. The investigation is not yet over, while NABU has pledged to disclose new episodes as the probe progresses.