Czech President Petr Pavel, a retired general and former NATO commander, says all Russians abroad should be under “strict surveillance” by the intelligence services of their host countries, Politico reports.

“All Russians living in Western countries should be monitored much more than in the past because they are citizens of a nation that is waging an aggressive war,” he said in an interview published by Radio Free Europe on Thursday.

In this regard, Pavlo referred to the precedent set by the USA during the Second World War.

“I may feel very sorry for these people, but at the same time, if we look back, when World War II started, the entire Japanese population living in the United States was also put under strict surveillance,” he argued.

“This is simply the price of war,” claimed the Czech president.

The precedent referred to by General Petro Pavel regarding the surveillance of Russians

When asked by Radio Liberty journalists what he meant by “monitoring”, Pavlo answered that “you are under the supervision of special services.”

The Reuters agency reminds that former US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942, which allowed the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans in observation camps after the attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base.

About 120,000 people were transferred to 10 camps because of fears that they might be enemy sympathizers.

General Petr Pavel also said during an interview with Radio Liberty that he expects NATO to provide strong long-term support to Ukraine at the summit to be held next month in Vilnius.

The former NATO commander spoke for unlimited support for Ukraine

Pavel, a staunch supporter of Ukraine who has called for “unlimited support” for it, said in May that he favors the country’s acceptance into the European Union and NATO as a long-term goal of the two organizations that include the Czech Republic.

He won the Czech Republic’s presidential election in late January, becoming the country’s fourth president in its post-communist history.

But his comments on Thursday surprised some analysts, given that he had previously said it would be a “big mistake” to lump all Russians into one bag.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Polish newspaper Reczpospolita in March, he spoke about Ukraine’s chances of defeating Russia through an expected counteroffensive from Kyiv, and also touched on relations with Moscow after the end of the war.

“I hope that we – I mean the countries that support Ukraine, and Ukraine itself – will be able to achieve the defeat of Russia in Ukraine. And let’s make Russia so much weaker that it can no longer launch aggression against anyone,” he emphasized.

The President of the Czech Republic stated that relations with Russia cannot be restored as before

“We also need to start looking for ways to connect with individual Russians to work together on a better future for Russia. It would be a big mistake to put all Russians in one bag,” the Czech president added.

“At the same time, we cannot return to business as usual without changing the Russian regime inside the country. It is simply impossible,” he emphasized.

He claimed that forgiving Moscow for starting the war in Ukraine “will encourage Russian leaders to start a new conflict in the near future.”

“We must still be determined to weaken the Russian regime so that the Russian people understand that what they did was a mistake. And that the only future is dialogue and, ultimately, cooperation, not aggression,” Petro Pavel said.

Pavlo joined the army during the communist era, when Prague was part of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, and was decorated for his peacekeeping service in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

He then headed the general staff of the Czech Republic and was chairman of NATO’s military committee for three years before stepping down in 2018.

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