Slovak prime minister Robert Fico has released a video message claiming that parts of the Western political elite directly want a clash between NATO and Russia - after, in his view, the strategy of defeating Moscow through the war in Ukraine failed.

"We are in mortal danger as we watch the West pour fuel on the fire through its support for Ukraine," Fico said. He is among the few prime ministers in the Union who maintains good relations with Moscow and refuses military aid to Kyiv, so his statements are always read through that filter. But the claim itself deserves unpacking rather than simply being dismissed.

His thesis is simple: since the war has not broken Russia, some Western politicians now believe a direct clash with NATO is required. Fico calls them "warmongers inside NATO" and warns that drone incursions could trigger the collective defence clause. Slovakia, he adds, will not send soldiers "on invented pretexts".

On the other side stands an entirely opposite reading of the same events. French president Emmanuel Macron and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk warn that Russia is intensifying hybrid attacks on European infrastructure and on countries that support Ukraine. So: two prime ministers in the same Union, the same period, completely opposite diagnoses of who is provoking whom.

And that is the most uncomfortable part. There is no neutral authority to say which version is correct - there are only states that have already decided which side they will stand on if the collective defence clause is ever invoked. Macedonia has been a NATO member since 2020 and that clause applies to it as well, however distant the argument between Bratislava and Paris may sound.

Will this reach us? If a drone over European skies is one day treated as an attack, nobody will ask whether the small member states had a position. Which is why this statement is worth hearing - not as truth, but as an indicator of how deeply the allies have diverged on the single most important question they face.