"They tricked us"; NATO made two mistakes, the first being Serbia

The first, as Zeman pointed out, is that NATO bombed FR Yugoslavia, and the second is that it "cowardly withdrew from Afghanistan."

"I said publicly, they deceived us. Because they told us in NATO that only military targets would be bombed in Yugoslavia. But in reality, as you surely know very well, it also applied to civilian objects and thus resulted in civilian casualties. We were the last country to give consent," said Zeman in an interview with the Czech newspaper Pravo.

The Czech government, despite pressure from allies, procrastinated to give consent to the bombing, and Zeman, then prime minister, put the vote on the agenda only when the categorical opponent of the bombing, the later Czech prime minister Vladimir Špidla, was absent from the government session.

"The crucial meeting of the Government was held when I was in Paris at the OECD meeting. And I think that's exactly why they sent me there. I saw that Zeman is a political figure with certain militant qualities," Špidla said in a later interview with the Czech newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes.

In an interview with today's Pravo, Zeman said that the vote ended as it did, and earlier he justified his consent to the bombing, for which he apologized during his second term, by saying that "it would not be normal if a newcomer among the allies, the Czech Republic, vetoed that decision".

"The majority in the government was in favor. I admit it too. However, until the last moment, we hoped that at least Greece would be against, but surprisingly, they were also in favor," said the former Czech president.

Miloš Zeman sees the withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan and handing over power to the Taliban as the second mistake of the Western military alliance.

"NATO's shortcoming is that it sometimes tries to play the role of world policeman, and this was seen in the attack on Yugoslavia. The shortcoming is that it sometimes does not behave very bravely. See the already mentioned departure from Afghanistan. The shortcoming is also that the information of the intelligence services they are not always of good quality. See, for example, CIA data on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Zeman said.

The former Czech prime minister and president, who for years actively pursued a pro-Russian policy, until Russia's attack on Ukraine, when he completely changed course, concluded today that NATO is the Czech Republic's only security guarantee against Russia's imperial ambitions and that the Russian occupation of 1968, when Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia, should not be repeated.