A joint meeting of the Czech and Ukrainian governments will take place in Prague today to discuss cooperation in the defence and energy sectors, migration, support for Czech exports, and the involvement of Czech companies in the reconstruction of Ukraine, the Czech Government Office announced yesterday.
Bilateral meetings between Czech and Ukrainian ministers are also scheduled.
President Petr Pavel will receive Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal at Prague Castle in the afternoon, but no comments for the media are planned after the meeting.
The Czech Republic is among the most hardline supporters of Ukraine, which has been defending itself from a Russian military invasion for over two years.
The meeting will follow the previous one held in Kyiv on 31 October 2022, when Czech ministers led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) held talks with the Ukrainian government and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. The trip was intended, among other things, to support Ukraine’s ambitions to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Members of the two cabinets also discussed Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction.
Fiala also visited Kyiv in March 2022, shortly after the start of the Russian invasion.
At the end of May this year, Fiala received Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Prague, where they discussed military aid to Ukraine, defence cooperation, and the development of economic relations. Shmyhal arrived in Prague for a business dinner at the Kramar villa, a former seat of the Czechoslovak and Czech PMs, where Fiala and other European statesmen discussed security issues. Preparations for today’s joint cabinet meeting began there.
“The prime ministers agreed on the meeting during PM Shmyhal’s visit to Prague in May. The security measures are appropriate to the situation,” Tomas Pojar, a national security adviser to the Czech prime minister, told CTK.
On the Czech side, the meeting will be attended by Interior Minister Vit Rakusan (STAN), Regional Development Minister Ivan Bartos (Pirates), Health Minister Vlastimil Valek (TOP 09), Defence Minister Jana Cernochova (ODS), Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky (Pirates), Minister of Industry and Trade Jozef Sikela (STAN), Transport Minister Martin Kupka (ODS), Education Minister Mikulas Bek (STAN), Agriculture Minister Marek Vyborny (KDU-CSL) and Minister for Science, Research and Innovation Marek Zenisek (TOP 09).
The joint meeting of the Czech and Ukrainian governments will not only express political support, but also demonstrate that the Czech-Ukrainian relationship has a large number of practical and beneficial advantages for the Czech Republic, said Tomas Kopecny, the Czech government’s commissioner for the reconstruction of Ukraine. He added that the meeting, attended by both countries’ PMs and ten ministers, will try to reach progress in these agendas and complete the efforts of ten ministries to implement the cooperation agreed on in autumn 2022.
Kopecny recalled that on Friday, Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Yulia Svyrydenko had held talks with Sikela, with dozens of Czech companies participating. More than 100 Czech companies are operating in Ukraine, some of them on a long-term and extensive basis, Kopecny added.
In early July, the Czech cabinet declassified documents showing that the Czech Republic had sent military materiel worth CZK 6.75 billion to Ukraine from army warehouses from the beginning of the Russian invasion until the end of May this year.
The Czech Republic has also launched an initiative to purchase artillery ammunition for Ukraine in non-EU countries.
The first shipment of 50,000 rounds of ammunition arrived in Ukraine some time ago, and the current goal is to deliver 500,000 rounds to Ukraine by the end of the year. According to Czech President Petr Pavel, 50,000 rounds of ammunition are expected to arrive in Ukraine in July and August, and 80,000 to 100,000 per month from September until the end of the year.
As of mid-June, 350,000 refugees from Ukraine had temporary protection in the Czech Republic.
The Czech government also holds regular meetings with the Polish cabinet. In the case of Slovakia, Prague suspended intergovernmental consultations in March because of differences of opinion on key foreign policy issues, which are mostly manifested in relation to Ukraine.
Intergovernmental talks with Israel were planned last year, having been postponed several times, but just before the scheduled date, the war broke out between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement, and the Israeli cabinet cancelled the trip to Prague.
