Ukraine could join NATO even if it doesn’t take back all its territory occupied by Russia, Czech President Petr Pavel said Monday.

“I don’t think that full restoration of control over the entire territory is a prerequisite,” Pavel told Czech newspaper Novinky a Právo.

“If there is a demarcation, even an administrative border, then we can treat this administrative border as temporary and accept Ukraine into NATO in the territory it will control at that time,” he added.

The former NATO general cited West Germany, which joined NATO in 1955 before unifying with Soviet satellite East Germany in 1990, as an example of an occupied territory joining the military alliance.

“Although part of Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union … the rest was accepted into NATO,” Pavel said. “So I think that there is both technically and a legal solution to allow Ukraine to join NATO without bringing NATO into conflict with the Russian Federation.”

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine grinds on, Moscow still controls about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory. Kyiv reclaimed some land Russian troops seized in the initial days of the 2022 invasion, but has made slower gains dislodging Moscow’s forces from the east of the country.

Source: Politico

Even if Ukraine Was Behind Blowing up Nord Stream, It Was a Legitimate Target, Pavel Says

The Nord Stream pipelines were a legitimate target, even if Ukraine was behind the 2022 blasts, Czech President Petr Pavel said on Aug. 21 in the Czech news outlet Novinky’s podcast PoliTalk.

Pavel added that he had no verified information on whether Kyiv was involved in the operation to blow up the gas pipelines.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea were built to supply natural gas from Russia to Europe.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 14, citing its undisclosed sources, that a number of high-ranking Ukrainian military and businesspeople had planned an operation to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022.

Kyiv has repeatedly denied connection to the Nord Stream blasts.

Pavel told Novinky that if the goal was to cut off gas and oil supplies to Europe and prevent Russia from profiting from it, then the pipelines were a legitimate target during the war.

“We already had a range of alternatives at that time, so the Nord Stream was not a critical pipeline on which energy security in Europe depended,” Pavel said.

“It certainly caused some complications, but not complications we could not cope with,” the Czech president added.

Source: The Kyiv Independent