Dubai and other cities, along with US bases in the Persian Gulf, have been the targets of Iran’s retaliatory attacks since Saturday. The United Arab Emirates announced that it had recorded more than 1,000 strikes against its territory since the start of the Iranian operations. The conflict in the Middle East has thus complicated the situation of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Airspace and airports connecting Europe and Asia were closed for flying missiles and drones in the countries of the Persian Gulf.
On Monday, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MZVEZ) of the Slovak Republic registered approximately 5,000 citizens of Slovakia in the region, who registered on the website in connection with a request for assistance. All of them are interested in returning to Slovakia. According to the head of the department, Juraj Blanár, transportation of all is not possible due to capacity reasons. According to him, repatriation flights will primarily be aimed at mothers with children or sick people. He asks other citizens to be patient.
Prime Minister Robert Fico he said that he would not allow Slovakia to be drawn into any military conflict and he repeated his claims that the opposition wanted war. “She is excited that the spiritual leader in Iran was killed, I say that it was a gross violation of international law, that it was an extrajudicial execution. For us, the most important thing is that there should be peace. The opposition has a completely different opinion on this, as it supports all military adventures,” announced the Prime Minister.
“Notice that. He is sitting in a cafe in Bratislava, he is smart and the war… Let him go, of course everything is fine in Iran and then he goes to Dubai on vacation, there a fighter jet flies over his head and he is fucked. And suddenly he just writes when you will come to pick me up by plane and I want to go home quickly.” added Fico.
Expert on security, defense and foreign policy and former ambassador of Slovakia to NATO Peter the Brave however in this case he sees the great failure of the government and the unpreparedness of the department of diplomacy. During the weekend, he criticized the government, saying that when Slovaks abroad need help, they should look for it themselves, because our special vehicles are used to transport papalás or accused extremists, like Bombic.
“While the Czech Republic already announced the first 4 flights on Sunday, the government is saying who it will not transport, and even on the fourth day we have no idea how many flights it will actually send. The Prime Minister is not bothered or bothered by the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides almost no assessment of the situation and refers people to the media. The entire state was completely unprepared for this crisis and had no intelligence information, web links did not work, and the ministry gave the first recommendations gradually only in the afternoon. For the prime minister, the situation is so unimportant that he considers convening the Security Council to be pointless.” he added on Tuesday, March 3 on the social network a famous diplomat.
“I already heard other information in the corridors, right there will still be rich Slovaks here who are going to spend luxury vacations in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf countries in the spring, so we will now export them here with our state planes and we are going to tear ourselves away for them. If they had the money for it, let them stay there, let them pay for the expensive hotels there, and let them wait until the situation improves. I heard this from government circles and informally,” concluded the former adviser to two presidents.
Slovakia eventually sent a few repatriation flights. The first two landed at the Bratislava airport early Tuesday evening. Minister Blanár later announced that another state repatriation flight from Amman, Jordan would take place on Wednesday, and flights from Muscat, Oman, and again from Jordan were planned for Thursday.
However, the situation got complicated and on Thursday he could not make the fifth repatriation flight to the Slovak Republic from Oman’s Muscat. The reason was the limited aircraft handling capacity at the Muscat airport, on the basis of which the Omani side canceled the reception of new aircraft in the morning until further notice and significantly limited the number of permitted flights.
