Czech president warns Ukraine against rushed counteroffensive

Ukraine's leadership has been privately warned by Petr Pavel, the president of the Czech republic – a decorated retired general who was previously Nato's principal military adviser - against the disaster of a rushed counteroffensive. In recent meetings in Kyiv between President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ukraine's prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, Pavel had cautioned they no longer had the element of surprise that had aided successful assaults on the eastern city of Kharkiv and southern region of Kherson last year. The war hero, who was chair of the Nato military committee until 2018 and decorated by both the Czech and French…