Autor fotografie: Se souhlasem Radka Vondráčka
In an interview on the Czech ammunition initiative, Radek Vondráček (ANO), chairman of the Constitutional Law and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament, says the project is commendable, but criticises the way it was implemented. He says that the Czechoslovak Group cannot be blamed for its interest in maximising profits, but he blames the government for prioritising publicity over efficiency.
Do you see the Czech munitions initiative as a beneficial and necessary project that has a chance to effectively support Ukraine in its defence against Russian aggression?
If I go back to the beginning, the ammunition initiative came at a moment when it had to replace something that European states had committed to, something that Europe had to deal with. It was the top leaders of the European Union and major European countries who supported Ukraine. And such support cannot remain just words, but must be translated into a material level. However, at one point, the Ukrainian army was in a critical situation and suffered from a real shortage of ammunition. The conflict threatened to end in a bad scenario, with the Ukrainian army unable to carry out war operations effectively. I do not want to speculate how it would have ended, but the situation was serious.
I am in favour of a ceasefire and a seat at the negotiating table. But at the same time, of course, I understand that it is impossible to achieve a just peace when the attacked state no longer has anything to shoot with. That is simple logic. So, to answer your question, the Czech ammunition initiative is commendable. It has replaced something that I think should have been done by someone else and in a different way. Or it has complemented other projects with a similar goal. But I criticise the way in which this Czech initiative has been implemented, and I have every right to criticise it. The President announced the plan at the Munich Security Conference in February to great acclaim, and a great deal of PR was done. I do not know to what extent he has consulted the Prime Minister and perhaps even the arms companies, I do not know, and we will probably never know.
In what respect do you criticise the implementation of the initiative?
From my point of view, the matter should have been handled discreetly. The ammunition is on the world market somewhere, it should have been bought discreetly. And that includes the countries that supplied it. Whether we like it or not, a large number of countries simply want to have some sort of rational relationship with Russia. They do not see the conflict as their own and do not want to be drawn into it. In their case, we run the risk that they would not want to supply ammunition if it were publicly known. At the same time, we could run the risk of Russia overpaying for the ammunition.
Then, once the matter was made public by the President and the Prime Minister, some of the contributing countries made their contributions public. In our country, everything was not and is not transparent to the public. For a long time, the government kept secret the essentially insignificant amount of the Czech contribution relative to the others. Critics have been labelled in various ways. And meanwhile, of course, the market has been screwed up by increased and publicly communicated demand. Any ammunition owner in the world knew it would sell, and sell well.
When I was questioned on Czech TV to provide evidence for my claim that the price had risen disproportionately, unreasonably, I said, first of all, that they should turn to the coalition to defend its actions. And secondly, my evidence is the economics scripts I studied for the university entrance exams. The supply and demand curve. Supply is limited. The whole munitions initiative came about because there is not enough production capacity in Europe. Part of it is our own fault. We have a green policy that is stifling defence production. And we are simply not able to supply the necessary amount of ammunition from our own resources, and we probably won't be in the foreseeable future.
So we have a limited supply. The demand is huge. That's screwed up the price. That's common knowledge. I don't need any specific invoices for that. That's how the market works. Into this comes the criticism, for example, from the Swiss media (NZZ, ed.), from the German Handelsblatt, from Senator Wagenknecht, where he is already talking about a specific contract and the fact that there could have been a profit of up to 1.5 billion. Our Government then says that everything is fine and that the price is market price. I say that, yes, it is market price. The two statements are not contradictory. But it is this high because of you. If you had acted discreetly and effectively and not tried to score political points with various gestures and this war activism, Ukraine could have got more ammunition. So, on the labels about pro-Russian positions, I would ask in this context, who is really for Ukraine?
We all have a thesis that we want to help Ukraine. The ANO movement has clearly stood up for Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian aggression and wants to help it as an invaded state. However, by not criticising these practices and by allowing all these purchases to be made in a non-transparent manner, I do not see how we are going to help Ukraine. Again, we will learn from Germany. Germany is paying the price. And, of course, there are people there who wonder how much they are paying and ask whether they are paying too much.
Instead of answers that would have been acceptable, for example, that the particular ammunition in that particular contract was really in some very poor condition and had to be reprocessed to some excessive degree, that it could not be used in Ukrainian guns, so the only thing we got was a reaction from the Prime Minister that anyone who criticises the Czech munitions initiative is helping pro-Russian forces, is acting against Ukrainian and Czech interests, and there are so many labels that I have got used to living with it. But the atmosphere in society is getting worse and worse. People are already afraid to say what they think because they are immediately accused of spreading pro-Russian narratives, of not having an opinion, of being influenced by disinformation narratives. Yet I am convinced that everything I have said so far is not really pro-Russian, it is pure logic based on elementary school economics.
There is a kind of information fog being created in the discussion of the munitions initiative. Part of it is the objectively valid assertion that rising demand puts pressure on the supply price, as you say. That is true. But Senator Wagenknecht's basic message operates with the term price at the usual place and time. He has that reference price calculated from several direct purchases that Ukraine has made. He compares that to ExcaliburArmy's bid to AMOS from February 2024. So the argument that the price is going up is completely irrelevant in the context of the particular contract that is being criticised and he is comparing comparables. The difference of 500 euros cannot be explained by any costs in this case, because the reference price already includes those costs.
I have eleven years' experience in politics. I know that figures are always open to interpretation. If absolute numbers are not enough, you use percentages to help you, and vice versa. It is the aforementioned unreasonable margin, and unreasonable in relation to the reference price. Such a price is really determined by supply and demand, and its level has undoubtedly been stimulated by our government's communication, or rather its aforementioned PR. But when we are dealing with public funds, we need to be strict about any excesses in this respect. I cannot comment on this particular contract, and I must say this quite frankly. That is beyond my expertise at the moment, as it is probably beyond the expertise of most people. There are various pieces of information available, others are said to be in a confidential mode. It is non-transparent, but I trust that our Members on the Defence Committee will be able to navigate through it.
For me, the information from the German and Swiss media is very important. In general, then, from those who are paying for it and who have the right to comment on it. If the Prime Minister also wants to declare that they are pro-Russian elements, then we are getting somewhere we really do not want to be, the debate is over. Transparency has taken a beating. The Prime Minister's reasoning was pathetic. The opposition is just doing its legitimate job. When he labels us, it's part of a political fight. But he can't ignore foreign journalists. By the way, that is why I was annoyed by the aforementioned attitude of Czech Television. In my opinion, the job of a journalist is first and foremost to control those in power. Not to test me, an opposition politician, to see if I have specific documents.
An important issue is precisely what is actually classified information within the framework of the initiative, because, for example, journalists from Respekt were involved in the transport of ammunition acquired by the CSG from its country of origin to Ukraine, which they then described in an article at the beginning of July. We have been hearing for months that this is classified information...
I don't read Respect and I respect that this is a sensitive subject because there is an ongoing war in Ukraine. But in all of this, I repeat the sentence that it is obvious that Ukraine got less ammunition for more money.
In the context of the matter, how do you view the information that was reported in July by Deník N, which referred to the former connection between the national security adviser Pojar and CSG, whose claimed costs and margins are now a matter of debate?
It is certainly logical that the ammunition initiative was not the beginning of the President waking up and challenging him. That's not how it works. Even though he was in a high position in NATO, and I respect him on defense, when he speaks on military issues he is probably the most authentic, someone had to come to him with this project. Someone came to the President or the Prime Minister and said: here is some ammunition, we are able to broker its purchase. Someone had to initiate the munitions initiative in this way. Somebody came to the politicians and said: we are able to do it. And the politicians, among other things, said: this will be a great PR, so we will do it. What is a little bit lost in this is the intention, first of all, to support Ukraine quickly and effectively, but I see other interests.