President Pavel meets Zelensky and surveys military equipment on trip to Ukraine
President Petr Pavel is on a visit to Ukraine where he is holding talks with Ukrainian officials about the situation on the battlefield and the reconstruction of the country after the war. This is the president’s second trip to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.
Czech President Petr Pavel arrived in Kyiv on Friday morning, where he then met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The two heads of state honored fallen soldiers at the site of the battle for Moshchun in 2022.
In the Odesa region, the Czech President met with the head of the local military administration and the heads of similar authorities in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions, who thanked him for the support Czechia provides to Ukraine and their regions.
The President also oversaw three vehicles donated to Ukraine by Czechia, Czech companies, and in cooperation with foreign partners. These include a special jammer and a drone detector.
The regional director of URC Systems, Václav Janda, showed the President one of the vehicles that acts as a powerful jammer for Russian drones. Janda described how the device works to the president:
"The operator can identify it as a drone by recognizing the shape of the signal, or an automated system will notify him. Whether automatically or manually, he then starts jamming. He examines the frequency and places the jammer on the same one."
These detectors and four-wheel jammers are already operating successfully in several Ukrainian regions. Janda continues:
"In the Donetsk region, our vehicle operated approximately seven kilometers from the front line, protecting the soldiers. Today, it has been withdrawn for servicing, but it will return. It was very effective against FPV drones at a distance of about 15 kilometers, as confirmed by the operators, and also against military drones flying at higher altitudes. We detected them at 80 kilometers and neutralized them at 30 kilometers."
President Pavel was also interested in the third vehicle equipped with anti-aircraft guns, which has already shot down several unmanned aircraft and two cruise missiles.
Few statesmen visited the south of the country during the full-scale war, with the exception of figures like the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and former President of the European Council Charles Michel.
This is the second visit to Ukraine for Pavel, the first being in April 2023 with then Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová. At the time, both statesmen visited devastated towns, with Pavel going to Bucha, for example, where hundreds were left dead after the Russian occupation. He then traveled to Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, as the first president during the full-scale war.
