Czech President Petr Pavel said today in a debate with schoolchildren in Sokolov that Russian incursions into the airspace of NATO members should not be tolerated indefinitely and that the allies will one day have to shoot down some of these fighter jets, as Turkey once did.
"There are people for whom it is enough to say: don't do that, it will end badly. In the case of some, it has to end badly for them to understand that this is not the right path. The Russians are trying that with us today. They are testing not only how the air defense of individual countries, the integrated NATO system, works, but also how determined we are to truly defend ourselves," the president said in a debate with students from the Karlovy Vary region in the west of the country.
Pavel warned that Russia is a country that respects only force in everything it does, while interpreting restraint as weakness, and according to Russians, a weakling deserves nothing more than to be a doormat.
"I'm not saying that we should punish every airspace incursion by shooting down a Russian military plane, but if it becomes necessary, if they continue the incursions, then we will have to do it once and for all so that the Russians understand that there are rules and that they are not violated," Pavel said.
The Czech president told the students that while he was the head of the NATO Military Committee, Russia constantly violated Turkish airspace.
"They provoked, tested where they could go until the Turks, when the planes attacked for the tenth time, got angry and simply shot down two or three planes. And there was peace," Pavel said.
He added that fears that this would lead to escalation and crisis were not fulfilled because the Russians realized that they were being punished for what they were trying to do.
"Russia realized that it was facing an adversary who would not allow its airspace to be violated, and it stopped doing so," Pavel said.
According to the latest poll, Petr Pavel is the most popular president of the Czech Republic after Vaclav Havel, followed by Vaclav Klaus in third place, while Czechs named Pavel's predecessor, Miloš Zeman, as the worst president the Czech Republic has ever had.
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