Did the Czech President's and government's decision to procure ammunition for Ukraine from sources outside the European Union lead to the Czech Republic dropping from "fourth to twelfth place" in the ranking of the world's safest countries? No, that's not true: In the 2023 Global Peace Index, the country dropped from eighth place a year ago, to twelfth in 2023, and the 2023 ranking was published months before the initiative was taken.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) published on TikTok on March 27, 2024. It features an article by a Czech news website, Novinky, with a headline in Czech, translated by Lead Stories staff as "The Czech Republic tightens up the game. It wants to get 1.5 million artillery shells for Ukraine." The text overlay in the video reads (as translated):
The government is threatening our security. We are also no longer about the 4th safest country in the world but the 12th.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed March 29 07:22:23 2024 UTC)
The TikTok video features a Novinky article (archived here) released on March 27, 2024, discussing the Czech President's and government's initiative to procure ammunition for Ukraine. This move comes as many EU countries, which have been providing military aid to Ukraine, have depleted their supplies available for assistance. The article cites an interview with Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky by Bloomberg, published on March 26, 2024 (archived here), outlining the Czech Republic's strategy to source shells from sources outside the European Union. The Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala also repeatedly spoke about the Czech initiative for Ukraine on February 29, 2024, here (archived here) or in April 2024, here (archived here) on his X account.
Czech President Petr Pavel (archived here) first mentioned the plan at the Munich Security Conference which took place from February 16-18, 2024 (archived here), months after the release of the 2023 Global Peace Index in June 2023 (archived here), which ranked the Czech Republic 12th in the world, in its listing of states and territories according to their levels of peacefulness. Therefore, the initiative couldn't have directly influenced the country's lower ranking from the previous year, contrary to what is suggested in the TikTok video.
(Source: Global Peace Index 2023 report screenshot taken on Wed March 27 07:22:23 2024 UTC)
Additionally, the Czech Republic was ranked 8th, not "about 4th" as stated in the TikTok video, in the previous year, 2022.
Each year The Institute For Economics and Peace (archived here), a global think tank established in Sydney in 2007, publishes the Global Peace Index, a report that analyses which nations worldwide are the safest and most peaceful. The report evaluates factors such as ongoing conflicts, security measures, and militarization to gauge the situation in each country (archived here).
