Digest of news from Slovakia, Czechia, Poland and Hungary, July 6 – July 12, 2026

Slovakia

1) Bratislava pauses Schengen visa applications from Russian citizens, keeping only a narrow sports exception  

Analysis:‍

Slovakia has temporarily stopped accepting Schengen visa applications from Russian nationals, leaving an opening only for applicants travelling to take part in sporting events. Through July and August 2026, that narrow category will be the sole basis on which Russians can apply, while national Slovak visas continue to be processed as before. All previously booked appointments for tourist, business, private, and other trips have been cancelled, and the visa centre says applicants will get their service fees refunded in full. Officials expect Schengen visa intake to resume once August ends, though no firm date has been given.

The move fits a broader European push this year to tighten visa access for Russian travellers, following earlier calls from Poland and roughly ten other states urging the European Commission to close Schengen entry to Russian tourists altogether. What makes Slovakia's step notable is the government behind it: Prime Minister Robert Fico has generally kept Bratislava closer to Moscow's positions than most EU capitals, so even this limited, openly temporary freeze counts as a small but visible shift in Slovak practice, whatever calculation lies behind it.

Czech Republic

1) PM Babiš says Czechia's PURL contribution will be a one-off payment 

2) Babiš won't block NATO's Ukraine funding plan but rules out direct budget support 

Analysis:

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš confirmed on the sidelines of the NATO summit that Czechia's contribution to PURL, the initiative that lets allies buy US-made weapons for Ukraine, will be a single, modest payment. He said Foreign Minister Petr Macinka found the funds within his own ministry's budget, describing this as consistent with the government's approach of not sending money to Ukraine directly. It marks the first time Babiš's cabinet has joined a Ukraine-related military aid mechanism, and it has already drawn objections from coalition partner Tomio Okamura of the SPD party, with the issue set for discussion at Friday's coalition meeting.

Before leaving for the summit in Ankara, Babiš had already signalled he would not block NATO's plan to commit €70 billion a year in military support for Ukraine through 2026–2027, while making clear Czechia would take on no financial obligations of its own, since available funds are earmarked for meeting the alliance's 2% defence-spending target. President Petr Pavel struck a different note, arguing it would be short-sighted for Czechia to complicate its future role in rebuilding Ukraine after four and a half years of support, and calling a strong, well-equipped Ukrainian army one of Europe's best security guarantees.

It`s clear that Babiš` government is trying to avoid new financial exposure while still finding a token way to participate, alongside a president pushing for a longer-term view of Czechia's stake in Ukraine's future. The gap between Babiš's minimal, one-off gesture and Pavel's talk of sustained engagement looks likely to keep shaping Prague's domestic debate over how far its support of Ukraine should extend.

Joint Case of this week: Ukraine, Czechia, and Slovakia dismantle a transnational drug trafficking ring‍

Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovak law enforcement broke up a criminal network that had been moving cocaine and methamphetamine into Europe. National Police Chief Ivan Vyhivskyi said the operation was led by officers from Ukraine's Zakarpattia region working alongside their foreign counterparts, with Europol and Eurojust coordinating the effort. Investigators had spent time since 2025 mapping the group's structure, its smuggling routes, and the roles of its members before moving into a coordinated final phase carried out simultaneously in all three countries.

The raids led to 20 arrests and 113 authorized searches across Ukraine, Czechia, and Slovakia. Police seized more than 5.5 kilograms of methamphetamine and nearly 300 grams of cocaine, worth an estimated 13 million hryvnias. Investigators said the drugs crossed borders hidden inside children's toys, personal belongings, and containers of household chemicals. Those detained ranged from people with prior criminal records to individuals who otherwise appeared to lead ordinary lives, among them a blogger, a schoolteacher, and a village council deputy.

Hungary

1) Kyiv and Budapest prepare a leaders' meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit

2) Orbán's call to protest the removal of the president draws only a small crowd

3) EU Council unlocks €10 billion in recovery funds for Hungary

Analysis:

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met his Hungarian counterpart, Anita Orbán, in Ankara to discuss preparations for a meeting between the two countries' leaders, along with the bilateral agenda and the outcomes of the previous day's NATO-Ukraine Council session. The same day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar held a brief conversation in Ankara to agree on the format of that upcoming meeting, reportedly expected to include a stop in Berehove, a town in Ukraine's Zakarpattia region with a sizable ethnic Hungarian community.

Domestically, former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's call to protest Magyar's push to remove President Tamás Sulyok found little public response. Only around a thousand people gathered outside Sulyok's Budapest office on Thursday, and Orbán himself did not attend, joking on Facebook about the modest turnout. Sulyok had already rejected Magyar's request to resign voluntarily after Tisza's parliamentary election victory in the spring, and refused again once a deadline set by the new government passed in late May. On July 4, Magyar submitted a constitutional amendment bill to parliament that includes ending Sulyok's term.

On July 10, the EU Council approved a new €10 billion Recovery and Resilience Plan for Hungary, split roughly between €6.5 billion in grants and €3.5 billion in loans, replacing an earlier plan that had become unworkable amid rising costs and shifting circumstances. The new plan is tied to anti-corruption safeguards, more transparent public procurement, greater civil society involvement in lawmaking, and steps to strengthen judicial independence. Unblocking funds that had been frozen for years over rule-of-law concerns under the Orbán government was a central campaign promise of Tisza, which won April's elections, and Magyar said his government had needed only a few weeks to deliver what its predecessor had not.

Together, these developments point to a Hungarian government moving on two fronts at once, rebuilding ties with Kyiv while consolidating power at home against a still-active “opposition” led by Orbán. Brussels' readiness to release long-frozen funds suggests the EU sees the political transition as credible, even as the fight over the presidency shows Hungary's domestic realignment is far from settled.

Poland

1) FM Sikorski warns Russia is "planning something again" against Poland and France 

2) President Nawrocki uses the Volyn remembrance day to call for a legal ban on the OUN-UPA flag 

3) PM Tusk marks the same anniversary with a call for solidarity built on truth, memory, and hope

Analysis:

At a joint press conference with his French counterpart on July 9, Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Warsaw holds credible information that Russia is "planning something again." He declined to discuss intelligence specifics but said Poland and France have been targets of a years-long Russian hybrid campaign, citing cyberattacks on state systems, shadow-fleet reconnaissance near critical infrastructure, arson, rail sabotage, and drone incursions, and drew a parallel to pre-2022 US warnings that helped disrupt Moscow's false-flag plans before the invasion of Ukraine. Days later, in an interview with Italy's Il Messaggero, Sikorski said Putin still lacks the means for a direct attack on Poland, noting Russia has failed to fully take Donbas after nearly thirteen years of trying, but that Warsaw takes the threat of further provocations seriously and cannot rule them out, especially given an unconfirmed Telegraph report that the US had warned Poland of a possible Russian test of NATO's resolve.

On July 11, Poland's National Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Volyn Tragedy, President Karol Nawrocki used a memorial ceremony in the border village of Radruż to call for a law banning the red-and-black flag associated with the OUN-UPA. He compared the banner to the Nazi "Blut und Boden" symbol and said he would push parliament to outlaw it, while stressing that his criticism targeted the Banderite ideology and those who carried out the killings, not the Ukrainian people as a whole. Nawrocki argued that glorifying past atrocities risks inviting new ones, and, unexpectedly, drew a direct line between “a 14-year-old Polish girl killed in Radruż during the massacres and Ukrainian teenagers killed today by Russian forces”.

The same day, Prime Minister Donald Tusk struck a different tone in a video address for the same anniversary, calling for every victim to be identified, named, and properly buried as a shared duty to their families and the nation. He announced that Warsaw will build a memorial wall with an eternal flame bearing the names of all identified victims, and said solidarity in the face of common threats must rest on truth, memory, and hope. Tusk added that memory should never be turned into a tool of hatred, that nationalism cannot be answered with more nationalism, and that building a peaceful future for Polish, Ukrainian, and European children alike is a responsibility the three share.

Poland's week shows a government juggling several registers at once: external vigilance toward a Russia it still considers dangerous despite its battlefield struggles, and two very different domestic voices marking the same painful anniversary with Kyiv. Nawrocki's push for a symbolic legal ban sits uneasily alongside Tusk's language of shared memory and hope, and how that gap plays out is likely to keep shaping the tone of Polish-Ukrainian relations well beyond this week.