Did the Czech government "commit treason" by lending Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a military plane on his tour of European countries ahead of the Vilnius NATO summit? No, that's not true: NATO and EU countries have provided extensive military assistance, including shipping arms, to Ukraine, to help it to fend off the Russian aggression. Offering a military plane to a Ukrainian delegation is in line with the Czech government's stance of continuous support to Ukraine.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on July 9, 2023, with captions in Czech translated by Lead Stories staff as "This is treason. The government must have known it."
It contained screenshots of a news article, with a text in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff as:
He is bringing, against all agreements, five Nazis from Turkey. So it is a fraud, again, and we are part of that.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 11 07:14:19 2023 UTC)
The reference is to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, who returned to Ukraine from Turkey on July 8, 2023, bringing with him five commanders who led the defense at the Azovstal steel plant during the battle of Mariupol, and surrendered to the Russians in May 2022. The five military leaders were then released from Russian captivity in September to Turkey, where they were to remain for the duration of the war, according to a prisoner exchange deal between Ukraine and Russia brokered by Turkey's President Erdogan, The Kyiv Post reported. The release angered Russia, which complained that Turkey had promised to keep the men and that Russia had not been informed about their release, Reuters explained.
The freed commanders included Denys Prokopenko, the leader of the Azov regiment, his deputy Svyatoslav Palamar and commanders of other Ukrainian army brigades, who were among the last defenders of Mariupol, The Kyiv Post added. They can be seen boarding a Czech Republic plane with Zelenskyy in a tweet published on Zelenskyy's official account.
Accusing Ukraine of "Nazism" and Zelenskyy of being the head of a band of "Nazis" is a recurrent, debunked narrative shared by Moscow, and the Azov regiment had been particularly reviled by Putin and labeled by the Russian leader as a neo-Nazi group. The brigade, which started in 2014 as a band of volunteer fighters fighting the pro-Russian separatists, has its own, unique and often problematic history, but in 2022 it had long ceased to be the far-right volunteer batallion it was at the beginning, Reuters reported.
Zelenskyy toured Europe ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius, which took place on July 11-12, 2023. He visited countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and then Turkey. He used a special Czech military jet for most of the trip, which was also employed for flying the former military leaders from Turkey to Ukraine. The Czech government offered the jet to Zelenskyy to facilitate his travel, the Seznam Zprávy website reported.
The Czech Republic's actions are in line with the EU and NATO's stance on the Russian invasion: The European Union and the United States have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia in response to its aggression against Ukraine. Petr Fiala's government, in the Czech Republic, has been supportive of Ukraine since the the beginning of the invasion, on February 24, 2022. According to a poll conducted by the Median polling agency on the same day, published on the Czech Radio website, 87 percent of the Czech population considered the invasion an "unwarranted act of aggression."
Czech Prime Minister Fiala was among the first leaders to travel to Ukraine in March 2022 to meet with Zelenskyy and debate further aid to the country. In less than two months after the beginning of the invasion, the Czechs donated nearly 1 billion koruna to the Ukrainian embassy in Prague for the purchase of weapons that were most needed at the time, the Czech Radio also reported. The Czech Republic is also one of the EU countries hosting the most Ukrainian refugees per capita.
Lending a plane to a Ukrainian delegation travelling to European countries ahead of the Vilnius NATO summit can, thus, be hardly seen as "treason" as it is in line with the continuous support to the war-stricken country always vouched for by the Czech government. Approval of help to Ukraine is less pronounced, though, among those who voted for opposition parties, compared to government parties' supporters, noted DenikN, citing an Ipsos poll on April 26, 2023.
The term "treason" has been often used by "trolls" spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda - such as in this case - in relation to the Czech Republic providing help and support to Ukraine.
