““If we allow Russia to emerge victorious from this conflict, we all lose,” Pavel told The Sunday Times.”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“If we allow Russia to emerge victorious from this conflict, we all lose,” Pavel told The Sunday Times.
In this context, Peter Pavel recalled the series of bloodless capitulations in the 20th century, how the leaders of the free world either stood aside or facilitated them, and what Adolf Hitler’s policy of appeasement eventually led to.
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s narrative about the start of the war reminded the Czech president of what his own country had gone through.
“For Czechoslovakia, the German minority [в Судетах] was used as an excuse. The same narrative is used by Vladimir Putin,” Pavel said.
“I would not call what we are doing now a betrayal of Ukraine. I would call it reluctance – reluctance to defend the principles we all claim to defend,” he added.
In this context, he recalled the protection of the European sky. Russian planes and drones have repeatedly violated NATO airspace, testing allies’ responses and exposing gaps in the decision-making process.
“I believe there will come a point, if these violations continue, when we will have to take stronger action, including potentially shooting down Russian aircraft or drones. Russia will not allow repeated violations of its airspace. And we must do the same,” he said.
Read also: Ukraine and Russia may now be “closer than ever” to a peace agreement – Whitaker
The Czech Republic has been providing humanitarian and military support to Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation.
Pavel’s statement came against the background of intensifying efforts to reach a peace agreement to end the war. Last week, negotiations between representatives of the USA and Russia took place in Moscow. Subsequently, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that during this meeting, Russian representatives did not agree with part of the points of the American plan to end Russia’s war against Ukraine
After this meeting, the Ukrainian delegation continued negotiations with representatives of the Trump administration in the United States.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on the evening of December 6 that together with Andrii Hnatov and Rustem Umerov they had a “long and meaningful” telephone conversation with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
According to Axios, this conversation lasted about two hours, and the discussion of the territories was difficult. As the publication writes, Russia still demands that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the parts of Donbas it controls, but the US is trying to develop new ideas to overcome this issue.
“Another key issue was US security guarantees to Ukraine. One source said the parties have made significant progress and are close to an agreement, but more work needs to be done to ensure both sides have the same interpretation of the draft security assurances,” Axios noted.