Richard Sulik

The ride was always likely to be bumpy given the combative characters of OLaNO leader Igor Matovic and Richard Sulik of the conservative Freedom & Solidarity (SaS) party. But amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the fact the coalition has lasted this long is already something of a surprise to many.

Oil shipments from Russia through a critical pipeline to Czechia resumed on Aug. 12 after more than a week, the Czech pipeline operator Mero said.

Czechia became the last central European country after Slovakia and Hungary to receive deliveries from the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline after a problem over payments for transit was resolved.

Citing heavy dependence, those countries in June secured an exemption from the EU's Russian oil embargo - due to kick in at the end of the year - for imports delivered by the Druzhba pipeline. The route carries around 250,000 barrels per day to the region. Slovakia imports over 95 per cent of its oil through Druzhba, and sends processed fuels on to its neighbours.

The Russian state company "Transneft" announced that Ukraine has stopped the transfer of Russian oil through the "Druzhba" oil pipeline to Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia since August 4.

According to the press secretary of the company, the reason is that the Russian side cannot pay for the transit under the conditions of sanctions imposed by Europe.

Things had all seemed so different a year ago.

Matovic insisted in a Facebook post that the Russian jab, yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is of high quality and the 2 million doses that are expected to be delivered by the end of June, the taking of which will be entirely "voluntary", can speed up the country's troubled vaccination program by 40%.

"The crisis is very real and someone will have to take responsibility for it. At this point, it's hard to predict whether the government will still hold on to its constitutional majority in three months' time," political commentator Peter Tkacenko told BIRN.