Czech PM accuses election rival Babiš of aiding Putin as polls show 16-point lead

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala has broken with diplomatic convention to accuse his chief electoral rival, former premier Andrej Babiš, of actively assisting Vladimir Putin's war effort. In an interview with the Financial Times published on Tuesday, Fiala said Babiš's opposition to the Czech-led ammunition initiative and to increased defence spending amounted to material help for the Russian president. The charge escalates a campaign that has not yet officially begun but is already being fought over the country's place in the Western security architecture.

The stakes are unusually concrete. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Czech Republic has been among Kyiv's most consistent supporters, supplying heavy armour, artillery and training. Prague also conceived and leads the multinational ammunition initiative, a pooling mechanism that allows allies to co-finance the purchase of 155 mm shells from manufacturers worldwide. As of early 2025 the programme had secured commitments for more than 1.5 million rounds, though delivery schedules have slipped behind initial targets. Fiala argued that a change of government could put the entire enterprise at risk.

The ammunition initiative and what hangs in the balance

The Czech ammunition initiative was launched in February 2024 after President Petr Pavel, a former NATO military committee chairman, warned that European stockpiles were exhausted and Ukrainian artillery was rationing shells. The scheme operates outside formal EU structures, relying on voluntary contributions from NATO and EU members. Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and others have pledged funds, with the Czech procurement agency negotiating contracts with producers in Europe, South Korea and Turkey. The first tranche of 180,000 rounds was due in mid-2024; by March 2025 roughly 60 percent of that volume had arrived, according to Czech defence ministry briefings.

Fiala's coalition, comprising the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), KDU-ČSL, TOP 09 and STAN, has framed the initiative as proof that middle powers can shape battlefield outcomes without waiting for unanimous EU decisions. Babiš has criticised the programme as opaque and financially risky, arguing that Czech money should prioritise domestic defence modernization. His party voted against the 2024 supplementary budget that earmarked 3.5 billion koruna (approximately 140 million euro) for the scheme. The disagreement is not merely procedural: if ANO forms the next government, it could withdraw Czech coordination, leaving the procurement pipeline without its central administrator.

Polling gap widens as campaign rhetoric hardens

The political arithmetic makes Fiala's warning more than theoretical. The STEM research institute's March 2025 survey, conducted between 3 and 13 March with a sample of 1,023 respondents, gave ANO 33 percent support. The SPOLU coalition, which runs as a single electoral list, registered 17 percent. The gap of 16 percentage points is the widest recorded since the 2021 election that brought Fiala to power. Other pollsters, including Median and Kantar CZ, show a similar spread, though with ANO in the high 20s and SPOLU in the low 20s. No other party crosses the 10 percent threshold, meaning a post-election parliament would likely require ANO to lead a coalition or tolerate a minority government.

Fiala's allies acknowledge the polling deficit but argue that the campaign has not yet begun in earnest. The election must be held by October 2025, and the formal campaign period typically starts in late summer. Government strategists point to the 2021 election, where SPOLU overtook ANO in the final weeks after a televised debate and a leak of Pandora Papers allegations against Babiš. This time, however, the dominant issue is foreign policy rather than domestic corruption, and the government's Ukraine stance, while popular in Prague and other cities, polls less strongly in the smaller towns and rural districts that form ANO's base.

Babiš echoes Orbán and Fico on diplomacy over arms

Babiš's foreign policy rhetoric has shifted noticeably since the war began. In 2022 he supported the initial wave of Czech military aid, including the donation of T-72 tanks and DANA howitzers. By late 2023 he began questioning the sustainability of open-ended commitments, and in 2024 he explicitly adopted the language used by Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia: that the West should pursue a negotiated settlement rather than escalate weapons deliveries. "We need peace talks, not more ammunition," Babiš told a party rally in Brno on 15 March. "Every day the war continues, more Ukrainians die and Europe pays more."

The comparison with Budapest and Bratislava is not accidental. Orbán has blocked or delayed EU aid packages to Ukraine, most recently the 50 billion euro Ukraine Facility, before relenting under pressure in February 2024. Fico, returned to power in October 2023, immediately halted Slovak military aid and has questioned Ukraine's sovereignty in energy transit disputes. Both leaders maintain working relationships with the Kremlin and have opposed EU sanctions packages. Babiš has not gone as far, he has not threatened vetoes at EU summits, and ANO MEPs in the European Parliament have generally voted with the mainstream on Ukraine resolutions, but the rhetorical convergence is clear enough that Kyiv treats his potential return to power as a strategic risk.

The Trump factor in Czech calculations

A distinctive element of Babiš's position is his explicit reliance on a future Donald Trump administration to end the war. "President Trump has said he will settle this in 24 hours. I believe he can do it," Babiš said in a January interview with Czech Television. "If he succeeds, the whole debate about ammunition becomes irrelevant before we would even take office." The assumption that a Trump presidency would impose a settlement favourable to Moscow, or at least freeze the conflict on current lines, underpins ANO's argument that continued Czech military expenditure is wasteful.

Fiala's government has taken a different bet. Prague has deepened defence cooperation with Washington regardless of the US election outcome, signing a new Defence Cooperation Agreement in 2023 that allows a permanent US military presence on Czech soil. The Czech Republic also meets the NATO 2 percent of GDP defence spending target, a threshold Babiš has said he would review. Czech officials privately acknowledge that a Trump-imposed ceasefire would create a dilemma: Kyiv would likely reject a frozen conflict, and Prague would face pressure to choose between its EU/NATO allies and a US administration demanding European compliance.

Domestic roots of a foreign policy split

The foreign policy divide maps onto a deeper domestic cleavage. Fiala's coalition draws support from university-educated, urban, higher-income voters who view Atlanticism and European integration as inseparable from Czech prosperity. ANO's base is older, less urban, and more sceptical of both Brussels and Washington. Babiš built his political brand on anti-establishment rhetoric, "I'm not a politician, I'm a businessman", and his business empire, Agrofert, was until recently the country's largest recipient of EU agricultural subsidies. The European Commission's 2023 audit finding a conflict of interest in Agrofert's subsidy receipts damaged Babiš domestically but reinforced his narrative of a Brussels bureaucracy targeting Czech interests.

Energy policy illustrates the overlap. The Fiala government pushed through a rapid phase-out of Russian gas and oil imports, accepting higher household energy costs in 2022-23. Babiš opposed the speed of the transition, arguing that Czech industry, particularly the chemical and automotive sectors, could not absorb the shock. When wholesale gas prices fell in 2024, Babiš claimed vindication. The government counters that the diversification succeeded precisely because it was front-loaded, and that Czech GDP growth in 2024 (1.1 percent, per the Czech Statistical Office) outperformed the euro-area average despite the energy shock.

What the election could change in Brussels and NATO

A Babiš premiership would alter Czech voting patterns in the European Council and the NATO North Atlantic Council. On Ukraine, the most immediate effect would be on the ammunition initiative's political cover. The programme relies on the Czech Republic's willingness to act as lead nation, a role that requires diplomatic bandwidth and defence ministry staff time. If Prague steps back, no other capital has volunteered to assume the co-ordination burden. Germany has the industrial capacity but has resisted lead-nation roles that could be construed as escalation. Poland is focused on its own rearmament. The Baltic states lack procurement scale.

Beyond Ukraine, Babiš has signalled a more transactional approach to EU budget negotiations. The next multiannual financial framework (2028-34) will be negotiated during the next Czech parliamentary term. Fiala's government has advocated maintaining cohesion funding while accepting rule-of-law conditionality. Babiš has called conditionality "political blackmail" and would likely align with Budapest and Warsaw in seeking to weaken the link between funds and judicial independence. In NATO, a Czech government sceptical of eastern flank reinforcement could complicate consensus on the new regional defence plans adopted at the 2024 Washington summit.