On Saturday evening, Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă sent congratulations to the new president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, speaking of strengthening the relations between the two states. Several European leaders have welcomed the victory of the new Czech president, who has promised to be an independent head of state, uninfluenced by party politics, to continue and provide aid to the war-torn Ukraine and to support Kyiv’s accession to EU. In turn, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky congratulated Petr Pavel on Twitter and said that he appreciated his support for Ukraine. In the second round of the elections, reserve general Petr Pavel, former head of the NATO Military Committee, received 58.32% of the votes, while his rival, the billionaire Andrej Babis, who held the post of prime minister between 2017 and 2021, got 41.67%, according to the final results. The voter turnout in this EU and NATO member country, with a population of 10.5 million, was 70%. Petr Pavel, aged 61, ran in the elections as an independent candidate and benefits from the support of the center-right government. He will replace Milos Zeman, a controversial politician who had maintained close ties with Moscow before making a U-turn during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
