EXCLUSIVELY. “There will be a new situation that we will have to deal with,” the president explains in an interview for Seznam Zprávy what he expects from 2024. “According to the indications so far, the shift will not be in the best sense of the word, as we would have imagined.”
Russian aggressor and President Vladimir Putin is waiting for the outcome of the US elections in November 2024 and hopes for Donald Trump’s re-election, according to Czech President Petr Pavel.
“President Putin persists in his view of the world, that events are determined by those in power, and of course Russia is counted among them, and the others are adapting, which should warn us. At least on the part of Vladimir Putin, there is an expectation that if Donald Trump succeeds, he would be able to come to an agreement with him, regardless of what Ukraine or the rest of Europe thinks about it, and that there could be some compromise that will notionally return Russia to the status of a key player and the others will have to come to terms with it somehow,” says Petr Pavel in the second part of the interview for Seznam Zprávy. Petr Pavel therefore speaks of a new situation that the international community will have to deal with.
The first part of the interview, in which Petr Pavel evaluated his first year as president, the mood in society, the communication clumsiness of the government of Petr Fiala (ODS) and his forty years in military uniform, was published this morning. You can find it here.
The second part of the interview concerns the expected development in 2024 and also the president’s optimism that the crises can be managed.
As a commander, you participated in a number of military missions in various war zones, whether it was in Yugoslavia in 1992 or later in Qatar. I hope it doesn’t sound silly, but do you find the experience of witnessing crisis situations and seeing a lot of victims around you useful in what you are doing today?
I think it’s extraordinarily useful. Because the direct experience of war will completely reset your standards of value. And in the short term, significantly, because you come back from a mission and you have it all a little bit flipped around, because the essential thing is to survive, to complete the task, and everything is subordinated to that. And here at home, of course, we deal with a lot of other things, because we don’t have to worry about survival day by day. And in the long run, it will affect you in that you really perceive what could happen if we are not careful about what we have now.
The direct experience of war will completely reset your standards of value.
We could have thought what a paradise and promised land Yugoslavia was for many Czechoslovaks. And what happened there? How terribly fast it went wrong and to this day we can see that some parts of the former Yugoslavia are still a powder keg, where the tension is there and the old grievances have not been resolved. These are things that, when one realizes, have a different perspective when assessing current problems. In addition, thanks to this experience, I know what a person in any leadership position should do before deciding on a force solution. I know exactly what this means not only for the soldiers, but also for the civilian population. If you look at it from the point of view of someone who hasn’t experienced it, then it’s just a political decision for you and then the pictures on TV or on your mobile phone. But I can imagine it in a completely realistic way.
Does such an experience give you inner peace? Won’t you just let yourself get annoyed by something, from your point of view, maybe banal or not so fundamental?
I think it’s probably the course of a lifetime, a lifelong experience. Because if you do work that is often risky, that is exposed, that sometimes requires quick decision-making in a difficult situation, that requires you to take responsibility and then fully accept everything that comes from it, because you are making decisions about people’s lives and health, then these are things that force you to look at things with prudence, a little bit from a distance. Because succumbing to stress usually means making mistakes.
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