(Bloomberg) -- Dutch election winner Geert Wilders said he discussed the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage and Ukrainian refugees who stay in the Netherlands long-term in his first face-to-face meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“I just met with the President of Ukraine about the terrible war in his country and the support of the Netherlands,” Wilders said in a post on X on Saturday.
“But we also talked about corruption in Ukraine, the chance for peace and the conditions for it, the Nord Stream issue and the Ukrainian men who stay in the Netherlands instead of helping in Ukraine,” Wilders added.
The pair met at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy, Zelenskiy said in a post on the presidential website.
Earlier this year, Wilders claimed that some Ukrainian refugees had come to the Netherlands for free housing and free health care, turning the Netherlands into a “village idiot of Europe.”
Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 subject to mobilization have faced a ban on leaving the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022. Still, thousands are believed to have crossed the border to avoid being drafted.
Last month, Polish authorities said a Ukrainian citizen suspected by German authorities of involvement in the Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage fled Poland after a European arrest warrant.
Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party delivered a shock election victory in November and is heading up the highest number of ministries in the new Dutch cabinet sworn in July. He was forced to abandon his bid to become prime minister, though, in order to forge alliances with three other parties further to the center.
Wilders, who called his talk with Zelenskiy “a good conversation,” argued in the past that the Netherlands should cut its military support to Ukraine but backtracked to persuade his coalition partners.
The previous Dutch cabinet, led by incoming NATO chief Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, has been a vocal supporter of sending military and financial support to Ukraine.
The new cabinet will keep existing support in place and add more if needed, Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans, a member of Rutte’s party, said in an interview with Bloomberg in The Hague in July. “We treat Ukraine differently than all the other budget items,” he said.
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