President Pavel says Czechia should be part of peacekeeping force in Ukraine
Czech President Petr Pavel is convinced that Czech troops should be part of the peacekeeping force in Ukraine after a peace agreement is reached. He said this during an interview with European Pravda, which was published on Saturday. The president also commented on the need to be pragmatic about Ukraine’s security concerns and the ways to think about guaranteeing long-term peace.
In the interview with European Pravda, President Pavel said that Czechia is already participating in the so-called “Coalition of the Willing”—a group of countries that are discussing a possible peacekeeping force on the ground in Ukraine after a full ceasefire is agreed upon. He added that when a common will to deploy such a force is found, Czechia should also be part of it.
This comes from Pavel’s belief that Russia is the “biggest security threat to Europe” and that we should not be naive about Russia’s imperialism:
“Being for most of my life in the military, I was pretty sure where the risks for Europe and for democracies come from. And within the last twenty years, the biggest threat to European security was and still is Russia.”
When it comes to security guarantees for Ukraine, the president argued that they should comprise both economic and military ties.
“One will be an agreement with the US, which we can briefly refer to as a mineral agreement. In practical terms, if there is an American business presence in Ukraine, you can expect that these interests will be protected.”
Since US President Donald Trump has shown that his administration does not have an interest in participating in peacekeeping forces, Pavel said that military protection should come from European countries.
“Another part of the guarantees will come from European countries—countries that have shown a willingness to support Ukraine. Now, we are mostly talking about the newly organized Coalition of the Willing, countries that are able and willing to deploy a stabilizing force in Ukraine once a peace agreement is achieved.”
In response to a clarifying question from the moderator, who reminded that there are some skeptical voices coming from Prague, he replied,
“Different politicians may have different opinions, but if there is a strong group of European nations that want to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, I am firmly convinced that the Czech Republic should be among them.”
He added that this may sound like a cliché, but that he thinks Czechia would be doing this largely for its own security as well.
Already on Friday, the Czech president told a press conference in Kyiv, after a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, that he believed it was premature to talk about specific Czech involvement in a possible peacekeeping mission until the matter had been sufficiently discussed. “If a decision is reached to create such a joint military force, the Czech Republic will be part of it,” he stressed, however.
The Coalition of the Willing, which the French and British have begun to assemble, includes not only key EU countries but also other countries such as Norway, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
Their political leaders have also repeatedly discussed security guarantees for Ukraine after the ceasefire agreement in the context of efforts by President Trump's administration to quickly negotiate a ceasefire between the two countries. Russia rejects any presence of troops from NATO countries on Ukrainian territory.
