The preparing political program of the new ruling coalition in the Czech Republic includes revising relations with Russia. About this RIA Novosti told a member of the Working Group on the preparation of the program Martin Dvorak.
he clarified that the new government of the Czech Republic wants to take the so-called “law of Magnitsky”. This document imposes restrictions on persons who are suspected of violating human rights. Now this law is accepted in six countries.
In addition, in the future program, it will be said about the need to prevent the access of “non-democratic states” to the key infrastructure of the Czech Republic. The expenses for the defense of the country by 2025 it is planned to increase to two percent, as required in NATO, he added.
unique relationship
The relations between Russia and the Czech Republic worsened against the background of the accusations against the Russian special services, which Prague considers it involved in the explosion in the warehouse of ammunition in Vrbetice in 2014. Czech Republic also announced the search for two citizens of the Russian Federation: Alexander Petrova and Ruslana Bolsharova. Russia denies its involvement in incident.
In May, Russia made the Czech Republic in the list of unfriendly countries, which also includes only the United States. Moscow and Prague exchanged the flight of diplomats, equalized the number of employees of the embassies.
Later, the Czech Foreign Minister Yakub Kulgank assessed the likelihood of termination of relations with Russia. “Currently, it is impossible to” not have “relations with Moscow,” the diplomat said, adding that, after an incident with explosions in Vrbetice, Russian-Czech relations are at the freezing point. He also noted that the political relations between the two countries need to be built anew, but the first step towards improving relations between Russia and the Czech Republic should be made Moscow, and this step is the elimination of the Czech Republic from the list of unfriendly countries.
statements and actions
Previously, the Special Commissioner for Energy Security, Vaclav Bartushki, said that Europe should not be “ceremony” with Russia and need to declare a gas war to demonstrate its tough position regarding gas prices. Bartushku specified that Europe is the largest consumer of gas and the main customer who can create problems on the largest market.
In response, the First Deputy Chairman of the Committee of the Federation Council on International Affairs, Vladimir Dzhabarov, called for these words as an absolutely unfriendly act. He noted that the representative of Prague “makes a mistake: he is trying to speak on behalf of the whole of Europe, but I don’t think that all of Europe thinks as a representative of this country, which was recently friendly to us and then changed the course sharply.”
however, Prague did not stop only on the statements. On September 27, it became known that Prague eliminated Beijing and Moscow from the lists of the project participants in the construction of the block of NPP “Coous”. Allegedly, according to the rules, only countries that have acceded to the International State Rentance Treaty from 1996 can participate in it. But Russia and China were not included in this agreement. The Russian Foreign Ministry called this step discriminatory.