Ukraine must accept territorial losses to survive – NATO state’s president

The West’s main goal is to ensure that the country remains independent, Czech leader Petr Pavel has said

Ukraine does not have enough strength to retake its former territories in the near term without devastating losses and must therefore prioritize survival as a state, Czech President Petr Pavel has said.

Pavel, a former NATO Military Committee chair and longtime supporter of Ukraine – who believes the country should join the US-led bloc even in its “temporary” borders – made the remarks in a BBC interview on Monday.

Ukraine, even with Western backing, is “not in a position to liberate occupied territories in a short time frame without a significant cost to lives,” the president said.

”We want them to survive as an independent sovereign country. If the cost is to accept that part of the territory will be temporarily occupied, then [so] be it,” he added, stressing that the West will never recognize any former Ukrainian region as Russian.

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Pavel has also said military force alone will not end the conflict, and called on the West to rely on economic and political tools. “This war cannot be won on battlefield,” he stated. “I believe that it is clearly in the interest of both sides of the Atlantic to exert much greater economic pressure on Russia. Because that’s the set of measures that doesn’t kill. But it’s very powerful when it comes to convincing power.”

Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow has grown accustomed to Western sanctions, which were first introduced in 2014 after the start of the Ukraine crisis.

The Czech president has repeatedly urged Ukraine to be “realistic” about its chances to push back Russia. Earlier this year, he also suggested that Kiev’s ‘counteroffensive’ in summer 2023 was doomed to fail from the start due to the apparent lack of forces.

Russia insists that a peace deal with Ukraine must include recognition of Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Regions as parts of Russia. The regions voted to join the country in referendums in 2014 and 2022. Russia has also demanded that Ukraine give up its bid to join NATO and commit to demilitarization and denazification. Kiev has rejected these terms.