PRAGUE -- Czech President Petr Pavel on August 30 joined a growing EU chorus urging allies to lift all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons as Kyiv continues its defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion of its much smaller post-Soviet neighbor.
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Speaking to RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service after the opening of the three-day Globsec security conference in Prague, Pavel, a retired general who also held a senior NATO post, said Ukrainians deserved a freer hand to defend their country.
“I think that what we need is to enable Ukraine to use fully the potential of weapons that Western countries are providing,” Pavel said. “What I mean is not supposing any restrictions on the use of aircraft, missiles, and so on, because Ukraine needs to use them to be successful in self-defense.”
The 62-year-old Pavel, a former chairman of the Czech General Staff, has been among the most outspoken of EU member state leaders in favor of military and other support for Ukraine since becoming president of his country of around 10 million people in March 2023.
Pavel's statements echoed a similar and nearly simultaneous call by the EU’s outgoing foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, to an informal meeting of the bloc’s defense ministers in Brussels. Borrell said Kyiv has the right to target the places from which it is attacked.
"No one wants" a war with Russia, he said on August 30 as he headed into the second day of the meeting. "But put yourself in the shoes of the Ukrainians: The Russians are bombing you from a place you cannot reach. You would like to fight as equals," Borrell said, adding that it is "absurd" to say allowing targeting on the territory of Russia means waging war directly against Moscow.
Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, have repeatedly called on Ukraine's global allies 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." Russia has responded in recent days with some of its fiercest barrages of missile and drone attacks aimed at cities and critical civilian infrastructure across Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials say that despite deliveries of new weapons that are helping bolster the fight, their armed forces are still at a disadvantage because the West's restrictions keeping Ukraine from using long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory.
"Long-term security for Europe begins with short-term, bold decisions for Ukraine," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told journalists in Brussels before a meeting of EU foreign ministers on August 29.
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EU Ministers To Address Ukrainian Missile Plea
The United States and other major suppliers of Ukraine’s war effort have been reluctant to allow the use of longer-range weapons, including portable rocket launchers, in situations that could provoke Russia into a major escalation.
Under growing pressure from other NATO countries that signaled openness to wider latitude for Kyiv, U.S. officials said in May that President Joe Biden had given Ukraine the go-ahead to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Other similar moves have followed and coincided with the activation of Western-provided F-16s with Western-trained Ukrainian pilots.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a gathering of NATO foreign ministers on May 30 that allies should consider lifting restrictions on the use of NATO weapons by Ukraine to hit targets on Russian territory.
Earlier this year, with Kyiv complaining of delays in supplies of weapons and ammunition, the Czech Republic led an initiative with Pavel’s vocal support to supply up to 1.5 million pieces of artillery ammunition. Fifteen countries joined the ongoing initiative.
Pavel, who chaired the NATO Military Committee, a main policy and strategy advisory body to the alliance’s secretary-general, from 2015-18, said at Globsec that he believed Russia’s reportedly rapid recent advance near the strategic Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk was not linked to Ukraine's use of thousands of troops to launch an incursion last month into Russia’s southern Kursk region. He said any Russian success there was more likely a result of favorable weather.
Kyiv has suggested it controls more than 1,200 square kilometers of Russian territory and that it could be a bargaining chip in future peace negotiations.