Description
The foreign ministers of central Europe's ex-communist countries fail to agree on decoupling from Russian oil and gas supplies. While the Czech Republic and Slovakia have vowed to reduce their dependency on Russian energy supplies because of the Ukraine invasion, Hungary has taken a more cautious approach, calling gas and oil sanctions on Russia a "red line". All three countries are heavily dependent on oil and gas supplies from Russia. This is a legacy of four decades of Communist rule that ended in 1989 when the so-called Iron Curtain fell. The ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia met at a castle near Prague on Tuesday to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the Czech Republic's upcoming presidency of the European Union. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES