Czech Republic joins the United States on another prestigious list

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Along with the short list of countries that have, or do, own Colt Firearms, the Czech Republic has joined the US on a Russian list.


Unlike teenagers, countries rarely write down lists of their enemies. But Russia does. On May 14th it published a list of “unfriendly countries”. Oddly, it had only two names on it: the United States and the Czech Republic.
Source: The Economist, 29 May 2021

The full article quoted here:
Russia puts the Czech Republic on an official enemies list
Its sin was to have blamed Russian agents for a deadly blast on Czech soil


Unlike teenagers, countries rarely write down lists of their enemies. But Russia does. On May 14th it published a list of “unfriendly countries”. Oddly, it had only two names on it: the United States and the Czech Republic. The latter was unexpected, but explicable. In April the Czech government revealed that a deadly explosion in 2014 at an ammunition depot in the town of Vrbetice, previously thought accidental, was set off by Russian agents. (Some of the ammunition was destined for Ukrainian forces fighting Russian-backed rebels.) The Czechs and Russians have since expelled dozens of each others’ diplomats. Relations are now as sour as at any time since the Soviet Union collapsed (though not as bad as in 1968, when Moscow’s tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia to overthrow a reformist government).

That is inconvenient for the Kremlin. It needs friends inside the eu to stave off further sanctions over its latest misdeeds. Although most Czechs distrust Russia, it has long been able to count on the Czech president, Milos Zeman, a cantankerous populist who likes to set off explosions of a rhetorical kind. Mr Zeman questioned his own country’s intelligence agencies for blaming the blast on Russia. During a visit by Serbia’s president on May 18th he abruptly begged forgiveness for nato’s bombardment of Belgrade in 1999, clearly trying to suggest that the Russians are not the only ones who go around blowing things up.

Mr Zeman also called Russia’s enemy list “silly”, and his powers as president are limited. But the government of Prime Minister Andrej Babis is hanging by a thread. The Czech Communist Party, an unreformed Russia-friendly outfit that has 8% of the seats in parliament, stopped backing the coalition in April, depriving it of its majority. If Mr Babis falls, Mr Zeman could decide who will run a caretaker government until an election in October.

The biggest consequence of the feud involves an upgrade to the nuclear power plant at Dukovany, originally built by the Soviet Union. The state power company plans to build at least one new reactor by 2036 for €6bn ($7.3bn), though analysts fear the cost may be twice as high. After the Vrbetice affair the government announced that Rosatom, the Russian nuclear consortium, had been excluded from bidding.

However, experts say that Russian companies have only been kicked out of the initial phase, and could end up winning contracts later. Having built Dukovany, they have an advantage over their competitors, France’s edf, South Korea’s khnp and the Japanese-American firm Westinghouse. “If you ask Czech engineers, they mostly say they would be for the Russians,” says Martin Jirusek, an energy industry expert at Masaryk University.

Czech views of Russia have often see-sawed. Last spring the two countries tussled over the removal of a statue of a Soviet general, Marshal Konev, hailed for liberating the country from the Nazis in 1945 but then reviled for planning the invasion in 1968. But views of the West can be wary as well. A survey in 2020 by cvvm, a pollster, found that by a two-to-one margin Czechs are glad that their country is a nato member, but they are split almost evenly on whether that is a guarantee of independence or a form of subjugation to foreign powers. Enemies list or no, some Czechs are still reluctant to take sides.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "The spirit of ’68"
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matt. 25:40

Re: Czech Republic joins the United States on another prestigious list

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From what I read earlier, the two implicated in the Czech explosions are the same two GRU colonels implicated in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter with Novichok in Salisbury, England in 2018.

Biden and Putin meet in about two weeks in Geneva, they'll have plenty of things to talk about.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Czech Republic joins the United States on another prestigious list

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Given the relationship history of these two countries, it would appear that the Czechs were effectively “punching up” to get the attention of the Russian Bear. Well done!
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Czech Republic joins the United States on another prestigious list

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I expect there is still a lot of animosity between Czechs and Russians over the 1968 suppression by Warsaw Pact countries of the "Prague Spring".
Antonin Novotny, the Stalinist ruler of Czechoslovakia, is succeeded as first secretary by Alexander Dubcek, a Slovak who supports liberal reforms. In the first few months of his rule, Dubcek introduced a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and the rehabilitation of political dissidents.

Dubcek’s effort to establish “communism with a human face” was celebrated across the country, and the brief period of freedom became known as the Prague Spring.

But on August 20, 1968, the Soviet Union answered Dubcek’s reforms with invasion of Czechoslovakia by 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops. Prague was not eager to give way, but scattered student resistance was no match for Soviet tanks.

Dubcek’s reforms were repealed, and the leader himself was replaced with the staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak, who re-established an authoritarian Communist regime in the country.

In 1989, as Communist governments folded across Eastern Europe, Prague again became the scene of demonstrations for democratic reforms. In December 1989, Husak’s government conceded to demands for a multiparty Parliament.

Husak resigned, and for the first time in two decades Dubcek returned to politics as chairman of the new Parliament, which subsequently elected playwright Vaclav Havel as president of Czechoslovakia. Havel had come to fame during the Prague Spring, but after the Soviet crackdown his plays were banned and his passport confiscated.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... hoslovakia
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Czech Republic joins the United States on another prestigious list

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highdesert wrote: Sat Jun 05, 2021 9:44 am I expect there is still a lot of animosity between Czechs and Russians over the 1968 suppression by Warsaw Pact countries of the "Prague Spring".
Just like in Hungary.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.-Huxley
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis Brandeis,

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