President Petr Pavel of the Czech Republic, a former senior NATO general who has been one of Ukraine’s most robust backers in its war with Russia, says he thinks it is time for Ukrainians and their supporters to face what he says is reality.
With Russia-friendly populist leaders such as Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary disrupting European unity over the war and with the fatigue of 19 months of conflict “growing everywhere,” Ukraine “will have to be realistic” about its prospects of recovering territory occupied by Russia, Mr. Pavel said in an interview.
“The most probable outcome of the war,” he said, “will be that a part of Ukrainian territory will be under Russian occupation, temporarily.” But, he added, that “temporary thing,” could last years.
The Czech presidency is a largely ceremonial post but the views of Mr. Pavel, who was elected last year by a wide margin, are generally aligned with those of the country’s center-right government under Prime Minister Petr Fiala. Mr. Pavel has considerable influence on security issues as a former chief of the Czech military’s general staff and past chairman of NATO’s military committee.
Since the failure last year of Ukraine’s monthslong counteroffensive to retake territory, European officials have spoken increasingly in private about Ukraine’s slim chances of recovering much lost land. In public, they mostly recite the mantra that the shape of any future settlement with Russia is up to Kyiv to decide, not the European Union or NATO.
The question of Ukraine’s future will be a major topic at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, where Mr. Zelensky will be appealing for more military and political support when he makes a speech there on Wednesday. He will also present a “victory plan” to President Biden in Washington on Thursday before unveiling it publicly.
Neither Ukraine nor Russia, Mr. Pavel said, can expect to secure its maximalist goals. For Ukraine, that includes the recovery of all the territory, including Crimea, seized by Moscow in 2014. For Russia, it is a demand that Ukraine formally cede land claimed by Moscow, including four regions only partially controlled by Russian forces.
“To talk about a defeat of Ukraine or defeat of Russia, it will simply not happen,” Mr. Pavel said in his office at Prague Castle this past week, “So the end will be somewhere in between.”
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who had ruled out direct talks with Russia, softened his stance over the summer, suggesting that direct talks could begin in November. But he has not backed down on demands that Russia leave all Ukrainian territory.
Whether to give up territory, Mr. Zelensky told the French newspaper Le Monde in July is a “very, very difficult” question.
Mr. Zelensky will be appealing for more military and political support when he makes a speech on Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and then in a meeting with President Biden in Washington the following day.
Opinion polls conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion show a marked increase since last year in the share of Ukrainians ready to accept territorial concessions.
That figure rose to 32 percent in May this year, from around 8 percent to 10 percent during the first year of war. A majority of Ukrainians, however, still oppose surrendering land.
Mr. Pavel said there were “a number of examples” of territories held temporarily by Moscow. He did not specify, but experts in Eastern Europe have often pointed to the Soviet Union’s occupation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as something Ukraine could face if it does not restore its preinvasion borders. The Baltic nations were occupied for half a century, but they eventually recovered their independence with the collapse of communism in 1991.
After surveying public opinion in Ukraine and in 14 other European countries, the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, in July reported “a profound chasm between European and Ukrainian opinion about how the war will end.” Ukrainians, it said, “want weapons in order to win, while most Europeans send weapons hoping this will help lead to an acceptable eventual settlement.”
Speaking to Ukrainian journalists on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said that Western partners had encouraged Ukraine to open negotiations.
“All our allies, including the closest ones who are on our side and always against Russian aggression, said that Russia should be present” at settlement talks planned in November, he said. “There can be no end to war without one of the parties.”
The Czech Republic, along with Poland and the Baltic States, has been a particularly stalwart supporter of Ukraine but has faced growing public pressure to curb its aid and to push Ukraine toward a deal with Russia.
Nearly two-thirds of Czechs, according to an opinion poll conducted this summer, would support a quick end to the war in Ukraine even at the cost of some territory remaining under Russian control.
An earlier survey found that 54 percent opposed sending weapons under their country’s flagship policy on Ukraine — a multibillion dollar program known as the Czech Ammunition Initiative. The program, managed by the Czech defense ministry and funded by Germany and other European Union countries, has provided Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of artillery shells obtained by Czech arms dealers from manufacturers in Turkey and elsewhere.
Mr. Pavel dismissed as “nonsense” insistent calls by populist leaders like Mr. Orban, a critic of military aid, that Ukraine should swiftly sue for peace and stop draining resources better spent on Europe’s domestic needs.
But, he said, Ukrainians need to be “realistic about the support that they can achieve” from governments under pressure to scale back help against Russia.
“The issue is linked to populism,” Mr. Pavel said, “It’s easy to say, ‘Let’s stop providing Ukraine with weapons and ammunition and then the peace will come on its own.’”
He added that “as someone with some experience with defense and security, and with knowledge of Russia, I know that peace will not come from a declaration by Ukraine that it will stop fighting.” Russia, he said, “will not stop its military activities.”
Mr. Orban, who has repeatedly denounced his NATO allies as warmongers, called for a halt to military aid to Ukraine and sought to rally support for an ill-defined “policy of peace,” is “probably the prototype of European populism,” Mr. Pavel said.
Dismaying fellow E.U. leaders, Mr. Orban traveled to Moscow in July to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin as part of what he called a “peace mission” that also included a visit to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and to Beijing. It was the first time that a European leader had visited Russia for an official meeting with Mr. Putin since the first months after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Mr. Orban’s efforts failed to budge Mr. Putin from sweeping demands that Ukraine withdraw troops from the four regions that Moscow has declared part of Russia and drop aspirations to join NATO. But Mr. Orban’s stance has been cheered by fellow Ukraine-skeptics, such as Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, and by Russia-friendly politicians on both the far left and far right across Europe.
“Constantly repeating that everybody else wants war, but I want peace — that would make me look much better than all the others,” Mr. Pavel said, “Unfortunately, most people do not realize that such a proposal is unrealistic.”
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