I am simple stating facts. If you think that i try to lecture you then you thought wrong.
Czech Republic has bought russian military vehicles and used them, so they have an military connection to russia. So some vehicles may be placed there like the L-39 (which russia actually used). Is that really hard to understand?
I am not trying suggest for the Czech Republic to be in russia as a subtree.
wrong. CZECHOSLOVAKIA bought some, and produced other under license. CZECH REPUBLIC never bought soviet nor russian equipment, were NATO country since 2004 and even before that czechoslovakia participated in operations with the west, mots notably during Desert Storm (chemical units), and UNPROFOR (fun fact, our current president, then Lieutenant Colonel, led a rescue mission to save french soldiers). Only russian import as far as i recall, if you can even call it that, were Mi-171s in 2005, but these werent bought, these were debt repayment.
CZECH REPUBLIC used remaining stock of the warsaw pact equipment since 1993 and we immidiately begun replacing it, either by selling them off completly or getting western equipment as soon as we could.
to even suggest that there is military connection to russia ignores the political background of our country, which was defacto forced to be part of Warsaw pact. yes, we used warsaw pact equipment. not becasue we wanted to. i could go on about czech domestic tank development cut short by the warsaw pact standartization, or how we fought tooth and nail to adopt vz.58 over AK as service rifle.
It’s the USSR that made up a chunk of Czechoslovakian equipment, not Russian. This is genuinely an important thing as it shows that the Czech republic is actively moving away from soviet era equipment and closer to indigenous and western equipment.
As put perfectly by Beeschurger:
Israel isn’t eastern aligned and still uses/used several soviet stuff (exampls of prior soviet equipment includes upgraded IS-3M, T-54 and T-55). Same with other nations such as Greece (BMP-1) and South Korea (T-80U, BMP-3 and even evaluated a modified KA-52K (ik know it’s Russian but it reinforces a point that having x vehicle doesn’t= x alignment)) despite western alignment.
Also Czechoslovakia and it’s successors have way more vehicles other than leopards and albatrosses, it would be waste to shoehorn it into a tree with plenty of domestic options and subtrees with way better current relations (like how India should’ve been with Israel for multiple reasons).
Also wouldn’t Iran be a way better option?
It would allow Czechoslovakia to be independent, add more Iranian vehicles and swell the USSR tree in plenty of ranks, it’s a win-win-win.
Looks like this will be one of the sub trees we’ll see this year. I hope to see the L-59 and MiG-23ML with Magic-2. If we also see the Slovaks the F-16 Block 72 is on the table.