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Illustrative photo – Senator Pavel Fischer (non-party member) speaks at a meeting of the upper chamber on February 27, 2019 in Prague.
Prague – According to the foreign affairs committee, the Senate should designate Russia as the most significant threat to global security in connection with its invasion of Ukraine. He should therefore call on the government to take further steps to defend the Czech Republic and support a change in policy towards Russia. After the meeting of the committee, its chairman Pavel Fischer (independent) told journalists today and called for further steps to defend the Czech Republic.
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“The Senate considers Russia to be the most significant threat to Czech European and global security and therefore calls on the government to take steps to defend the republic,” Fischer quoted from the draft resolution, which the upper parliamentary chamber should discuss in a week. According to the senator, the opinion should support a change in Czech policy towards Russia.
“The threat is so serious that we have to do more,” Fischer said. According to him, there is a need to increase aid to Ukraine in the fight against Russian aggressors at the EU and NATO level as well. “If we were to be restrained in this aid today, we could also find ourselves in a world in which Russia will be close to our borders and we will have to invest in our defense many times more and much more,” said the chairman of the committee. He pointed out that even the most daring rearmament programs of the Czech army need time, which, however, is in short supply.
Fischer recalled that almost a year had passed since Russia attacked Ukraine, but he did mention the Russian attempt to take control of the Donbass in 2014. “Russia violates the UN Charter and has become a threat to the international system of cooperation,” noted the chairman of the committee.
According to Fischer, the committee also agreed that without effective Czech help, democracy has no chance of winning in Belarus, which under the leadership of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko stands alongside Russia in its imperial plans. According to the committee, in addition to helping Belarusian students in the form of scholarships, the government should support Belarusian civil society, independent media or lawyers.
The committee's opinion on Belarus includes a proposal that the government should strive at the EU level to expand the list of organizations that are designated for terrorist and subject to sanctions. It should include the Belarusian secret police, the KGB, as well as GUBOPiK, which stands for the Belarusian Main Administration for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption, which focuses, among other things, on the persecution of opposition leaders in Belarus, of which there are 1,450. They are currently on sanctions lists only some representatives of these organizations, pointed out Fischer.
