The President of the Republic Petr Pavel visits Slovakia

The President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, was on a working visit to Slovakia on June 6 and 7. He attended the meeting of B9 presidents in Bratislava and visited the soldiers of the Czech contingent at the training center in Lešt.

The top politicians of the countries of the Eastern wing of NATO met at a joint meeting in Bratislava. The Czech Republic was represented at the meeting by President Petr Pavel. The main topic was the war in Ukraine. On the first day of his visit to Bratislava, the President met with Gitanas Nausėda, President of the Republic of Lithuania at a bilateral meeting and laid a wreath at the Tomb of General Milan Rastislav Štefánik.

On the second day, President Petr Pavel and the President of the Slovak Republic, Zuzana Čaputová, visited the Lešť training area and informally met with Czech soldiers who are part of the battalion of the multinational combat group in Slovakia, which was created in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Statement by the President of the Republic to the media after a two-day working trip to Slovakia

June 7, 2023

We are very happy that I had the opportunity to meet the presidents of nine countries in the region, in the case of Bulgaria, that is, the vice president, so we had the opportunity to discuss a common position at the NATO summit, because it is important if we can at least agree regionally in international institutions. As a small country, we don’t always have the opportunity to assert our opinion. If nine of us can agree, then it is a weight that must be heard after all. And that agreement was on all the basic things that will be discussed at the summit, that is, support for Ukraine, a long-term plan for it, the construction of a stronger advanced defense on the eastern flank of the alliance, some cooperative projects. I think we’ve really been able to agree on everything, and that’s a positive thing.

The other side is the bilateral cooperation with Slovakia, which has been really good lately. And here in Leště, where the Czech Republic is the leading state of the multinational battalion group that was created after the annexation of Crimea and after the NATO countries decided to significantly strengthen their presence on the eastern flank, it is not only an expression of our allied responsibility. Although we are a landlocked country from NATO’s point of view, we perceive the threat of the eastern members of the alliance as our threat and we participate in making them feel safe, which I think is clearly the principle of why we are actually in the alliance.