US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Slovakia on Sunday, continuing his European tour with visits to governments led by right-wing allies of President Donald Trump, before heading to Hungary.
The trip comes a day after Rubio urged Europeans to defend “Western civilisation” in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, calling on them to align with Trump’s vision of a “renewal” of the global order.
During a brief visit to Bratislava, Rubio is scheduled to meet Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, a nationalist leader who has positioned himself as close to Trump.
Reports by Politico, citing anonymous European diplomats, suggested that during a recent visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Fico expressed concern about the US president’s mental state. Both Washington and Bratislava have strongly denied the claims.
Fico said after the Mar-a-Lago meeting that he and Trump had held “extremely important” discussions on nuclear energy.
Rubio will then travel to Budapest for talks on Monday with Hungarian officials, including Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Trump has openly backed the right-wing Hungarian leader, describing him as a “strong and powerful man” ahead of Hungary’s parliamentary elections scheduled for 12 April. Orbán faces his toughest electoral challenge since returning to office in 2010, with his Fidesz party trailing opposition leader Peter Magyar’s TISZA party in opinion polls.
In a speech on Saturday, Orban vowed to continue his fight against what he called “bought pseudo-civil organisations, journalists, judges and politicians”.
Orbán’s rhetoric frequently mirrors that of Trump, and he has portrayed himself as a European ally of the US president’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. Many American conservatives praise him for his hardline stance on immigration, opposition to LGBTQ rights and campaign against what he terms “gender ideology”.
Orbán has also announced plans to travel to Washington next week to attend the inaugural meeting of Trump’s “Board of Peace”.
Energy is expected to feature prominently in Rubio’s talks in both Bratislava and Budapest, according to US officials. Slovakia and Hungary, both landlocked Central European states, have sought to maintain relatively warm ties with the Kremlin despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Both countries remain heavily dependent on Russian fossil fuels and have clashed with the European Union over plans to end imports of Russian gas. US officials said Washington aims to strengthen energy cooperation with its two right-wing European partners.
