Is the Czech government lying about the start of the Czech ammunition initiative, where the Czech Republic offered to procure or mediate the purchase and finding of shells for Ukraine? And do the Czech media not provide enough information about the system? No, that's not true: The Czech President and Prime Minister publicly announced the ammunition initiative to other countries in the first quarter of 2024 to show other countries a way to finance and procure further ammunition for Ukraine. The system, which involves private weapons producers, has been used since 2022 in the Czech Republic, but the broad offer and an appeal to find funds happened in 2024. The Czech media has provided information about the project and its origins.
The claim appeared in a video published on TikTok on June 6, 2024. The video is no longer available, but here's a cached capture from June 6, 2024. The content was taken entirely from a pre-election debate among Czech political party leaders ahead of the European Parliament elections (archived here). The image below shows the post's appearance before being removed from the platform. It featured excerpts of the speech of the Czech communist party leader Katerina Konecna during the debate. Konecna said, commenting on the Czech government's policy of aiding Ukraine, as translated:
Fiala´s government is escalating the conflict, claiming how cool it is to attack a nuclear power while lying to us here, for example, about the munitions initiative. The whole ammunitions initiative was created in 2022. Here, very secretly under the cover of darkness, they are negotiating, they are dealing, they are sending money.
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Jun 7 05:48:34 2024 UTC)
The debate was broadcast by CNN Prima News on June 4, 2024. This is a screenshot of Konecna giving statements about the government's initiative during the televised debate:
(Source: CNN Prima News screenshot taken on Wed Jun 7 07:48:34 2024 UTC)
In the debate, Konecna accused the Czech government of "escalating the conflict" in Ukraine by aiding the country to defend itself against Russia and "lying" about the Czech ammunition initiative, which, according to the politician, has started already in 2022. When the moderator asked her about the source of her claims, Konecna cited "an interview" of Czech envoy for Ukraine reconstruction Tomas Kopecny (archived here) with some unidentified Ukrainian newspapers and claimed that such detailed information could not be found in the Czech media.
Katerina Konecna is the leader of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and was re-elected as a member of the European Parliament in the June 7-8, 2024, elections in the Czech Republic. She was the leading candidate of the Stacilo coalition of non-parliamentary left-wing parties for the elections.
Konecna's comments are misleading because the Czech media regularly informs about the initiative, including how it started. The Czech envoy Kopecny gave a detailed interview explaining its origins and purpose in the Voxpot podcast published on June 5, 2024 (archived here). Kopecny (archived here), a former deputy Defense Minister, said the state started approaching some private weapons producers in 2022. At the time, it developed a procurement scheme to get shells for Ukraine from other markets, as it became clear that NATO countries would eventually run out of their weaponry stocks. Kopecny also said that he could not elaborate on how exactly the "system" worked but said that, unlike the EU financing tools, it did not mean that countries are only reimbursed for sending weapons to Ukraine from their own stockpiles.
Czech Foreign Ministry spokesman Daniel Drake also clarified in an e-mail sent to Lead Stories on June 7, 2024, that the "system for this year´s initiative" has been in place since 2022. He added that "what specifically" Konecna is accusing the government of lying about is unclear. Kopecny delivered information about the project to the major Czech and international media at the sidelines of the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Prague on May 30-31, 2024, (archived here), Drake added.
The information Konecna cites is not exclusive to the European Pravda (archived here). The article she mentions even says Kopecny talked to "a circle of journalists," which included representatives of major Czech and foreign media. Reuters, for example, has also cited the envoy in the article on the event (archived here).
Czech President Petr Pavel first announced that the Czech Republic could procure purchasing hundreds of thousands of shells for Ukraine during the Munich Security Conference in Munich in February 2024 (archived here). The Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala also presented the project to other EU members during the leaders´ summit on March 22, 2024 (archived here).
Further articles about the ammunition initiative from the Czech press can be found here (archived here) or here (archived here). An interview with Kopecny with the Czech state broadcaster Cesky Rozhlas from May 29, 2024, can be found here (archived here).
Lead Stories have already fact-checked a claim linked to the Czech initiative here.
