A Russian victory in the war against Ukraine would mean the defeat of the entire West, Czech President Petr Pavel warned in an interview with Sunday’s newspaper The Sunday Times. At the same time, he pointed out that if Ukraine were to lose the war, the threat of airspace violations or other hybrid attacks would only increase. TASR informs about it.
“If we allow Russia to emerge from this conflict as a winner, we will all lose,” Pavel said in an interview at Prague Castle.
Comparison with Munich
According to Pavlov, the recently revealed secret negotiations between Russia and the USA, which proposed that Ukraine give up its territory, strongly remind Pavlov of the Munich Agreement of 1938. The European countries signed it with the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and decided that Czechoslovakia must cede border territory inhabited mainly by Germans to Germany.
Pavel compared the current behavior of the West to the policy of concessions before the Second World War, however, he expressed his belief that this time, in his opinion, the West is guilty not so much of betraying the Ukrainians, but rather of a lack of collective courage to defend its own values.
“I wouldn’t call what we’re doing now a betrayal of Ukraine. I’d call it a reluctance — a reluctance to protect the principles we all claim to protect,” he said.
Parallel
According to him, Russian President Vladimir Putin is using the same narrative used by Nazi Germany when annexing the Sudetenland to justify the invasion of Ukraine. “In the case of Czechoslovakia, the German minority was used as a pretext. The same explanation is used by Vladimir Putin,” he said, referring to Moscow’s argument about protecting the Russian minority in Ukraine.
The Czech head of state recognized that after the war, Europe will need a new security treaty with Russia, similar to the Helsinki Act of 1975. In it, Russia should recognize the territorial integrity of all signatories and agree to enforceable restrictions on its actions. “We simply cannot allow Ukraine to lose this conflict,” emphasized Pavel.
Europe is the USA
In the interview, he also argued that Europe should be able to fight and win a possible war on its own, without significant help from the United States. He warned that if the US was “busy elsewhere, for example in the Asia-Pacific region” and unable to provide key capabilities such as intelligence, transport, communications and logistics, “we in Europe should be able to handle it ourselves”.
However, according to him, Europe does not have enough resources to duplicate these structures. As a solution, he therefore proposed to strengthen the institutions within the “European pillar” of NATO, which includes a kind of duplication of command positions between American and European representatives, which would allow a smooth transfer of powers in the absence of the US.
Moscow and testing
Recent incidents in Europe, in which drones penetrated the airspace of NATO member states during Russian attacks on Ukraine, were described by Pavel as deliberate and well-planned. According to him, they had several goals. “One of them is to show that Russia is capable of this. Another is to test our air defense system. But it also tests our determination to defend ourselves,” he said.
He also did not rule out that in the future Europe could react to similar incidents attributed to Moscow more forcefully than before – for example, by possibly shooting down a Russian drone or plane. “Russia would not allow repeated violations of its airspace. And we must do the same,” he added.
