Jan Lipavsky said “this will take time and patience”
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky who took office on December 17 intends to look for a way to unfreeze relations with Russia. He said this on Sunday, speaking on the discussion program “Questions by Vaclav Moravets” on ST24 TV channel.
“We will look for a way to unfreeze Czech-Russian [relations]. This will take time and patience. They need to be normalised, they are very bad now. We [as a country] in Russia are included in the list of unfriendly states. It is not a good situation in the long run. It is certainly not good for the Czech Republic. The question how to come to the point where Russia understands that it should exclude us from this list and that we can have substantive, normal relations”, – Lipavsky said.
According to him, the Czech Foreign Ministry will continue to hold roundtables with the participation of experts from the country’s leading political parties to discuss the prospects of relations with Russia. The minister expressed concern about the curtailment of contacts with Russia at the official level.
“We only exchange [diplomatic] notes. The foreign ministers and prime ministers have not met for more than 10 years. There are no consultations at the level of deputy [foreign ministers] either. This situation could relatively easily lead again to a number of misunderstandings”, – Lipavsky said.
“Diplomats should meet,” he stressed, answering the question of the show’s host whether he would pay a visit to Moscow. This could only happen under certain conditions. Lipavsky, who made several claims against Russia, did not rule out the possibility of a visit to Prague by the Russian Foreign Minister.
Dita Haranzova, deputy chairwoman of the European Parliament, who took part in the programme, linked the possible normalisation of Russian-Czech relations to the settlement around Ukraine and the situation in Kazakhstan. “I don’t know if this is the best moment to normalise relations with Russia,” she said with the fact that relations with Moscow escalated in spring 2021 due to Prague’s reaction to the incident with the explosion of military depots in the village of Vrbetice (east of the republic).
For the time being, in her opinion, the development of Russian-Czech relations should take place on the level of youth and grassroots contacts between the two countries. The European Parliament, according to its deputy speaker, supports civil society in the Russian Federation.