PRAGUE -- Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky has insisted Ukraine has a right to defend itself, including through attacks on Russian territory amid a debate over Western-imposed limits on the use of weaponry, but he acknowledged that Prague’s allies supplying the most sophisticated weapons face “strategic dilemmas.”
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Speaking on the second day of the Globsec security conference in Prague on August 31, the Czech Republic’s top diplomat also acknowledged broadly that there are “a lot of difficulties and a lot of divergences” ensuring that allies are on the same page.
“The Czech Republic has a very simple stance: Ukraine is a victim of aggression, and according to the UN Charter, the aggressor has the right to defend itself,” Lipavsky said. “This defense can logically also take place on the territory of the aggressor. That means the Czech Republic does not set any limits on the systems it provides, or on the weapons or ammunition it supplies, to what military equipment is supplied to Ukraine.”
Czech President Petr Pavel and outgoing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell each argued publicly on August 30 for abandoning restrictions on how Ukraine can use donated weapons.
With the United States and Germany most notably said to be imposing such curbs, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly urged them and others to take "decisive action" and allow Ukraine to strike military targets deeper inside Russia with Western-provided weapons.
Earlier this month, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russian territory with Zelenskiy saying Russia "must feel what it has done."
“On the other hand,” Lipavsky said in Prague, “let's be realistic in that the most sophisticated weapons systems, which may have a long reach, or simply put the supplier into certain strategic dilemmas, do not flow from the Czech Republic. That means we do not [face] the questions that some of our allies have, for example.”
Russian aerial bombardments have devastated Ukraine’s power and other infrastructure and caused large numbers of civilian casualties throughout the country in the two-and-a-half-year full-scale invasion, although Moscow insists it does not target civilians.
SEE ALSO: Ukraine's Odesa Navigates Its Third Summer Of Full-Scale Invasion“It's better if the plane with the missile or bomb doesn't even take off, to give an example, than trying to shoot down the plane or the missile that is targeting [Ukraine]. I think that is logical and Russia has no claim it can impose on Ukraine,” Lipavsky said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said a day earlier that Central Europe was “the beating heart of solidarity” since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
But the Czech Republic's neighbors -- and fellow EU and NATO members -- Slovakia and, especially, Hungary have resisted or, in Budapest’s case, refused to supply Kyiv with military aid despite widespread consensus among most members.
Lipavsky said the Czech stance “is absolutely clear and Czechia is committing to support Ukraine militarily, humanitarily, [and] politically as long as it is necessary for Ukraine to win.”
But he acknowledged that maintaining the kind of “solidarity” that von der Leyen referred to is a challenge even among Central Europeans, keeping allies like Hungary and Slovakia on side.
“We have to work on that. It is not easy,” Lipavsky told RFE/RL. “Here is a lot of difficulties and a lot of divergences. But this is the task, to keep them as close as possible.”