Sitting in a comfortable rental apartment in Liptovský Mikuláš, looking out on the majestic Vysoké Tatry (High Tatras) mountains in north central Slovakia, it is hard to imagine that less than 200 miles to the east, a savage, and at this stage seemingly pointless, war continues to engulf Ukraine. Currently on a short “sabbatical” from Trump’s America, this observer has been struck by the apparent ambivalence in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the continued bloodshed to their east.
While it must be stressed that countries in Central Europe, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic, have, by and large, been resolute in their economic and military equipment support to Kyiv as well as, more importantly, hosting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, it seems clear that the central section of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) eastern flank has a serious case of war fatigue.
This is to be expected as, after four years of combat, the war has effectively reached a sanguinary stalemate. The Red Army is stuck in the proverbial mud of Eastern Ukraine, hunkered down under constant attack by Kyiv’s indigenously produced drone juggernaut that is the envy of the world. Moscow’s response has been to pursue a macabre strategy of simply killing Ukrainian civilians through drone and missile blitzkriegs of their own.
The growing indifference to the bloodshed has clearly manifested in election results across this region over the past 30 months. Starting with Robert Fico’s election as prime minister in Slovakia in late 2023, through last year’s return to power in Prague of Andrej Babiš, and concluding with the April 19, victory in Bulgaria’s election by Rumen Radev, voters in several countries near the front lines with Ukraine have chosen leaders who are much more amenable to finding accommodations with Tsar Vladimir (I want to be) the Great than to ending his special military operation.
Even the recent electoral shellacking suffered by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Central Europe’s heretofore poster child for shameless Russophilia, does not mean that Budapest will immediately become a steadfast ally of Kyiv. In fact, Anita Orbán — the new Hungarian foreign minister and no relation to the former prime minister — made it clear upon assuming office in mid-May that while Budapest supports Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, she has serious concerns about the treatment of the Hungarian minority in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia region.
The mood in Central Europe is not unique, however, but represents a microcosm of the gradual global detachment from the conflict, underscored primarily by the Trump administration’s turning its back on Kyiv as it attempts to score easier foreign policy wins elsewhere — see Venezuela, and possibly Cuba next. Washington’s pursuit (or not) of regime change in Tehran in support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s “wars without end” strategy has turned into a Persian Gulf impasse with deleterious consequences for energy and food prices the world over. Throw in Trump’s recent high-stakes tête-à-tête with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the Ukraine war is likely not even on the back page of the president’s morning briefing book.
Nevertheless, the conflict was front and center at a May 13 meeting in the Romanian capital of the Bucharest Nine, a grouping of former Warsaw Pact nations and Soviet republics that now forms NATO’s eastern flank. The session, attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Nordic leaders, focused on ways to maintain robust support to Kyiv while strengthening the alliance along its eastern borders. Not only was the meeting not covered in the U.S. press, it received little notice outside the participating countries.
The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel — a retired general who remains one of the region’s most pro-Ukrainian leaders, much to the annoyance of his own government in Prague — did attend the meeting. In a late April 2026 interview on CNN with Christiane Amanpour, Pavel highlighted the persistent danger that the Kremlin poses to NATO’s eastern flank. According to the Czech president, the combination of Moscow’s war economy (approximately 7.5% of GDP in 2025), 1.5 million troops under arms and perceived opportunity — i.e., Western indifference — makes it possible that in the not too distant future Russia may expand its military aggression outside of Ukraine, with the Baltic states as a potential target.
Although many would view a Russian attack on a NATO state as highly unlikely, such an eventuality is within the realm of possibility, particularly with the world’s focus directed elsewhere. Pavel’s scenario, were it to happen, would risk a more general European war and would possibly even grace the pages of President Trump’s daily brief — provided he actually reads it.