On the six-month anniversary of the start of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, activists outside the Russian embassy in Prague send a message to Putin. Photo: BIRN Democracy Digest: Signs, Trains and Espionage in CzechiaTim Gosling, Claudia Ciobanu, Nicholas Watson and Peter DlhopolecBratislava, Budapest, Prague, WarsawBIRNAugust 26, 202207:09 Elsewhere in the region, Hungary replies to EU Commission; Slovaks send more military aid to Ukraine on Independence Day; and infant mortality rate on the rise in Poland.

A giant hand making the “V” sign – a harsh insult in the UK and some other countries – appeared outside the Russian embassy in Prague to celebrate Ukraine’s Independence day. The sculpture, sporting blue and yellow fingernails, was installed by a group of activist artists. “From one side it says ‘Peace and Victory’,” said one, “and from the other… well, let’s just say it should be crystal clear.”

Like the national government, the Prague authorities are keen supporters of Ukraine amid Russia’s brutal invasion; the embassy now sits on Ukrainian Heroes Street, which features blue and yellow street furniture. The activists told BIRN that Prague City Hall approved the sculpture for a 12-hour vigil outside the grand mansion, which used to be a nest of spies, according to the Czech security services, until close to a hundred ‘diplomats’ were expelled last year amid revelations that Russian intelligence agents were behind the 2014 explosion of the Vrbetice arms depot that killed two people. The activists are now seeking a permanent home for the hand. Outside Prague Castle, perhaps?

Czechia’s centre-right government has agreed a “neutral stance’ on a controversial bill to enshrine marriage as between a man and a woman in the constitution, Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced on Wednesday. The legislation was proposed in response to the ‘threat’ posed by the recent submission of a parliamentary bill to legalise gay marriage. Similar competing bills failed to pass during the last parliamentary term. Jsme fer, an NGO promoting equal marriage, said the government’s decision “clearly shows that we do not belong ‘to the West’, as it claims”. Equal marriage and other social issues are seen as source of potential weakness for the five-party ruling coalition, which runs the spectrum from staunch conservatives to social liberals. Activists insist the Czech political class is lagging the electorate in its approach to such causes.

They also appear to even be behind state rail operator Ceske Drahy, which this week put out an ad centred on a lesbian couple. Getting in a bit of trolling against Viktor Orban’s demonization of LGBT people, the spot features film great Ivan Trojan on the train to Hungary with his fictional daughter and her partner. Jsme fer said the ad reflects Czech society’s acceptance and respect for the LGBT community, and expressed regret that the same cannot be said for the rest of Visegrad.

Four Czechs were released by Albanian police this week after being arrested for entering a defunct military factory in Polican in the south of the Balkan country. The four were apprehended on Sunday, the same day that authorities of the NATO member state charged two Russians and a Ukrainian with espionage. That trio was apprehended trying break into an armoury, reportedly attacking a pair of guards with a nerve agent in the process. The quartet of Czechs claimed to be lost tourists, but reports suggest they forced a door to enter the facility. The police said that, despite the release, their equipment is being held for examination in the ongoing investigation. The Czech Foreign Ministry said only that it was informed about the case. Last year, Tirana launched a probe against five Czechs and two Russians suspected of spying on NATO exercises hosted by Albania.

Democracy Digest: Signs, Trains and Espionage in Czechia

Fireworks explode above the River Danube as part of the celebrations of the country?s major national holiday in downtown Budapest, Hungary, 20 August 2021. This year’s were postponed due to an erroneous weather report. EPA-EFE/Zoltan Mathe

Hungary replies to EU Commission; firework fiasco fallout

Hungary’s government this week finally replied to the European Commission over the decision by Brussels to trigger a new mechanism designed to withhold EU budgetary funds from member states accused of undermining the rule of law. Hungary became the first target of this new mechanism in April after the Commission launched the process just two days after Prime Minister Viktor Orban had won an election by a landslide, citing worrying issues in public procurement and conflicts of interest in the use of EU money. Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga said the government had “put a comprehensive package of measures on the table to address all the Commission’s concerns,” including the promise to amend by the end of October several laws criticised by Brussels if an agreement on financial aid can be reached with the EU executive. Whether this will be enough for the Commission to release the billions in funds that Budapest desperately needs to shore up its faltering economy remains the question. A Brussels spokesman told Politico it will “thoroughly analyse this response and then determine the next steps.” It has a month to do so.

In authoritarian states, pity those employed in the most mercurial of industries such as weather forecasting. Amid much criticism about whether it was a smart use of taxpayer money at a time when citizens face rampant inflation and exorbitant utility bills, a huge fireworks display in Budapest to celebrate 1,000 years of the Hungarian state had been planned by the nationalist-populist government for the St Stephen’s Day national holiday on August 20. Yet seven hours before the scheduled start of what the government had been trumpeting as “Europe’s biggest fireworks display”, the city authorities were forced to postpone the event to the following week over extreme weather warnings from the National Meteorological Service. Alas, the predicted rainstorm never arrived, instead changing direction to strike parts of eastern Hungary. The weather service posted a public apology on its Facebook page, but that mea culpa wasn’t enough for the government, whose innovation minister, Laszlo Palkovics, sacked two of the service chiefs with immediate effect.

Democracy Digest: Signs, Trains and Espionage in Czechia

The parade from the Embassy of Ukraine in Slovakia through the Old Town on the occasion of Ukraine’s Independence Day in Bratislava on 24 August 2022. PHOTO TASR – Dano Veselský

Neighbourly solidarity; Slovak coalition blues

Six months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Slovak leaders joined their counterparts around the world on August 24, which is Ukrainian Independence Day, to reassert their full support for the eastern neighbour. Russia’s invasion took place 54 years after Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia on the evening of August 20, 1968. The occupation lasted for more than two decades. “With Russia’s attack on Ukraine, we are reminded again that the fight for freedom and democracy never ends,” Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová tweeted on August 21.

A day before Ukrainian Independence Day, the Slovak Defence Ministry struck a deal with Germany that will also help Ukraine. While Slovakia will receive 15 German tanks, Ukraine will obtain 30 older infantry fighting vehicles from Slovakia by the end of this year. Since the start of the invasion, on February 24, Slovakia has spent €154 million on military support for Ukraine, the Defence Ministry announced. “We will stand by Ukraine until dictator Putin and his army leave Ukraine’s territory,” Prime Minister Eduard Heger said in a Facebook video.

At home, the preacher-like prime minister was still unable to resolve the coalition crisis. Over the past week, Heger suggested several technocratic solutions that he believes might help enhance relations within his four-party coalition government. However, he refuses to remove Igor Matovic, the finance minister and his party’s boss, from the cabinet – the number-one condition laid down by Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), one of the four coalition parties.

SaS chair Richard Sulík, who serves as economy minister, has already announced he is going to resign next Wednesday, as he can’t see any way out of the current impasse. Three other SaS ministers, who look after justice, foreign affairs and education, will leave the government as well. SaS voters are, nevertheless, split on whether the party should leave the government, a poll showed this week. Ahead of the new school year, which will see thousands of Ukrainian children attend Slovak schools, and at a time of rising energy bills, ongoing high-profile corruption investigations and the war across the border,  a minority government scenario is not what Heger had been hoping for.

Democracy Digest: Signs, Trains and Espionage in Czechia

Dead fish in the Oder River in Szczecin, western Poland, 23 August 2022. Two aerators have been put into operation on the Oder to oxygenate the water. EPA-EFE/Marcin Bielecki

Cap on Polish heating prices; infant mortality on rise; the Oder thing  

The Polish government has announced that the costs of heating and hot water provided by district heating plants will not be allowed to rise this year by more than 40 per cent compared with March, after some district heating users complained about prices doubling or even more over the past few months. Initially, the government had offered a 3,000-zloty subsidy to households heating their homes with coal, but the need to expand that kind of support to people using other forms of heating is becoming obvious. Over 40 per cent of Poles rely on district heating. In addition to the cap on prices, the government has said it would extend the subsidy to homes using other sources of energy for heating than coal, and that it would provide an additional almost 3 billion euros to local authorities, to be used for energy efficiency measures but also simply to support locals with managing the costs of heating.

The infant mortality rate increased in Poland last year for the first time after decades of steady decline – an effect which most medical professionals blame on the abortion ban that the Constitutional Tribunal imposed in 2020 on foetuses with abnormalities. According to the National Statistical Office, the infant mortality rate last year was 3.9 per 1,000 births, compared with 3.57 in 2020, which constitutes a 9 per cent rise. The jump in neonatal deaths, at 19 per cent, was even higher. Infant mortality rates had been falling in Poland since the early 1950s. Doctors across Poland are also reporting an increasing number of stillbirths and miscarriages.

The authorities are expecting a massive influx of dead fish to reach Szczecin, a major Polish city in the north-west of the country, not far from the Baltic Sea. While there had been hope that the worst of the environmental catastrophe on the Oder river had passed, the prognosis changed when a sudden drop in the oxygen levels in the river was noted around Szczecin, potentially caused by the amount of dead organisms earlier decomposing in the river. While the authorities have not definitively identified the cause of the disaster on the river, one of the main hypotheses circulating is that the problems were caused by toxins produced by golden algae, whose overgrowth was in turn stimulated by the disproportionally large presence of salty substances in the river – the source of which remains unknown.

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