Ammunition, Energy and a Sense of History: The Czech Ambassador on Ukraine and More

War on the Rocks

News, Politics

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Nick sat down with Czech Ambassador to the United States Miloslav Stašek for a geographically wide-ranging conversation that moved from Munich to the Middle East to the Texas automotive industry. Amb. Stašek discussed the progress of his government’s ammunition initiative for Ukraine, relations within the Visegrád Group and the expanding scope of U.S.-Czech ties.

Transcript

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0:19.0	My name is Nicholas Danforth and this is War on the Rocks, a podcast covering strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. I'm thrilled to be here this morning at the Czech embassy on Spring of Freedom Road with Ambassador
0:24.9	Milislav Stasak. Thank you so much for joining us.
0:28.0	No, thank you very much for inviting me.
0:30.0	We're eager to start out by giving you the opportunity to tell us about the Czech ammunition initiative.
0:36.2	Well, this initiative was announced by our president at the last Munich Security Conference, but this is nothing new for the Czech Republic
0:46.3	because basically what we announced it and try to encourage in our countries to
0:52.4	join us in this effort we start doing basically
0:55.6	first day of the of the Russian attack on Ukraine. It means in the first stage we
1:02.1	try deliver what we could, what we had in our storages and what were our capacities.
1:08.6	But at the moment when we are facing a deficit of ammunition and our defense on the Ukrainian side,
1:16.4	we thought that it would be wise basically to encourage another states to create a joint
1:21.8	fund from which we will be able to purchase
1:24.9	ammunition, Ukrainians needed most. This is the 122 and 155 millimeters caliber ammunition for the canons.
1:37.1	And we start contacting the states out of the European Union. It means states usually which are not able to deliver anything directly to Ukraine,
1:49.0	but they were willing to cooperate through the Czech Republic and I'm so glad that at the moment
1:57.0	we are having 20 countries on the board which basically financially contributed to the fund and there is also Canada out of the
2:07.0	EU. It means this is something which we promise in the first day to deliver over 800,000 pieces of ammunition to Ukrainians in the
2:18.1	value of 1.5 billion U.S. dollars, but it seems that we'll be able and capable to to collect even
2:27.0	more than what we would we declare. It means the negotiations are still on the
2:31.3	on the way and to the relay support of all countries we could
2:36.5	we could build a bigger capacity for the for the Ukrainians and I think this is a
2:41.6	necessary bridge because we are still waiting and we're hoping that additional
	...

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