Former territory of the Eastern Bloc, the Czech Republic remembers the arrival of the Red Army in the streets of Prague on August 21, 1968. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia could not therefore leave the "city of a thousand towers and a thousand steeples".

“A few days ago I said that the Russians weren't crazy and that they wouldn't attack Ukraine.

I confess that I was wrong (…).

The fool must be isolated.

And it's about not defending ourselves with words alone, but with concrete measures," President Milos Zeman said in a televised speech, calling the military operation an "unprovoked act of aggression. ".

In 2015, he was one of the few European heads of state to travel to Moscow for ceremonies commemorating the end of the Second World War, boycotted by most Western leaders after the annexation of Crimea by Russia l year before.

"I respect the victims of the Russian people during the Second World War, but that does not mean that I will accept that a foreign army enters the territory of a sovereign state without declaring war," the Czech president said on Thursday. .

No more visas issued, except in humanitarian cases

Milos Zeman notably wanted financial sanctions, mentioning the SWIFT interbank network, “which would eliminate Russia from the transaction network”.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala also announced that "the processing of visa applications from Russian nationals" was suspended, "with the exception of humanitarian cases".

The Czech consulates in Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg will also be closed.

The Czech Republic is on the Kremlin's "unfriendly states list" with the United States, following revelations in April 2021 of the involvement of Russian services in explosions at an ammunition depot on its soil in 2014.

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  • War

  • Vladimir Poutine

  • War in Ukraine

  • Czech Republic

  • Russia

  • World

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