Jan Lipavsky reaffirmed Prague’s decadelong alliance for Israel, but raised the issue of support for Ukraine amid a shift in U.S. policy on it.

Canaan Lidor

By Canaan Lidor, JNS

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, the first foreign minister to visit Israel after Oct. 7, 2023, returned to the Jewish state on Wednesday for talks on bilateral ties and what he termed “Russian aggression.”

The visit by the top diplomat of one of Israel’s closest allies highlighted the two countries’ decades long partnership, but also their differences regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, which Lipavsky suggested Czechia perceived as an existential threat.

After his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Lipavsky told the news site CT24 that he had told the Israeli premier “that what Iran is to Israel, Russia is to us. That is a sentence that everyone here understands very well, and I don’t have to explain our positions at length.”

Netanyahu “agreed on the need to support Ukraine and at the same time stated that some kind of end needs to be reached in the Russian-Ukrainian war,” Czech Ambassador to Israel Veronika Kuchyňová Šmigolová told CT24 about the meeting.

Earlier this week, Israel voted at the United Nations along with the United States, Russia and Hungary, as well as about a dozen countries in the developing world, against a nonbinding General Assembly resolution condemning Russia as the aggressor in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Czechia and almost all other European Union countries voted in favor.

“We also talked about Russian aggression against Ukraine and relations with the new American administration,” Lipavsky wrote of his meeting with Netanyahu.

U.S. President Donald Trump outlined a shift in Washington’s policy on Ukraine, from unconditional aid in the war with Russia to an off-ramp toward a negotiated end to the conflict. Last week, Trump called Zelensky a “dictator” and suggested he had initiated the war with Russia.

Lipavsky has been a vocal critic of this shift, penning an op-ed earlier this month in European Pravda in which he wrote that “To abandon Ukraine is to abandon the principle that nations have the right to determine their own destiny.”

Czechia, which the Red Army invaded in 1968 to keep the country under the Soviet Union’s control, has condemned Russia’s incursions into Ukrainian territory since 2014, and the invasion that Russia launched in February 2022.

Israel has also condemned Russia’s invasion, but has not been vocal on the issue. Russia had military bases in Syria when it invaded Ukraine.

Lipavsky, whose last visit to Israel took place three days after the Hamas massacre, reiterated on X his country’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas and other terrorist entities.

During his current visit, Lipavský also inaugurated the NATO liaison embassy in Israel, which is housed in the Czech embassy.

“All the talks were very cordial, we confirmed the strong, traditional relations between the Czech Republic and Israel,” he told CT24.

In a statement, the Prime Minister’s Office said that Netanyahu had asked Lipavsky that his “gratitude be conveyed to Prime Minister Petr Fiala, who has stood alongside Israel throughout the war.”

Netanyahu “emphasized the warm friendship between the two peoples and the importance of the alliance” between them. The statement mentioned neither Ukraine nor Russia.