Straightforward: The government raised the Ukrainian flag, Slovaks are dealing with golden toilets. We are commemorating the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion.
The brutal conflict in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army invaded, has been ongoing for four years. The Ukrainian flag was raised at the Government Office in Prague despite government deputies from SPD. In Slovakia, they commemorate the sad anniversary from the opposite perspective.
The extensive Russian invasion of Ukraine began precisely on February 24, 2022, at 4:15 AM. There had been speculation about this move for several days. Although the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged Czechs to leave Ukraine before the direct attack, the presidential duo Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman were broadcasting guaranteed information that it was impossible.
Although no one could really imagine it, the disconnect from the actual state of affairs of the dominant figures in Czech post-November politics was definitively confirmed. Let's recall that Miloš Zeman was still the acting president at that time.
“Ukraine wanted nothing other than what we wanted; we are defending a principle that protects small countries like us. Evil always tends to expand wherever it finds space, and we must not allow it that space,” said current President Petr Pavel, according to SeznamZprávy, during a weekend happening on the anniversary.
As a gesture of solidarity with the attacked state, the flag was raised on the Government Office building and on some ministries. However, expressing support for the attacked country does not appeal to all politicians, despite the fact that we have a bitter historical experience with the aggression of larger powers in our history, whether it was the annexation by Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union's invasion in 1968.
Not long ago, the chairman of the ruling SPD had the Ukrainian flag removed from the Chamber of Deputies building. The flag hysteria in the SPD continues.
"As a Member of Parliament, I can't do anything about it, but for the record, let it be said that I distance myself from it. There should be Czech flags and Czech state symbols on Czech offices, which are meant to SERVE Czech citizens, not symbols of any other country - no matter which one and in what context,"
stated SPD Member of Parliament Markéta Šichtařová on X.
Slovak politicians did not stop at distancing themselves either. The deputy chairman of the ruling Smer party there even declared war on Brussels, because the center of the European Union is not helping Slovakia with the purchase of Russian oil.
“Criminals like Zelenskyy do not deserve any help… Brussels is at war with Slovakia and Hungary and is no longer even hiding it,”
further in his post on X he urged the Slovak opposition to purchase “golden toilets”.
The Slovak Prime Minister decided to limit electricity supplies to Ukraine precisely because oil stopped flowing to Slovakia and Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline; it is damaged by Ukrainian and Russian attacks. Poland and Romania, on the other hand, have offered to replace the limitation of electricity supplies to Ukraine. Thus, Slovak power plants will not sell energy to Ukraine, but their competitors from other countries will replace them. Meanwhile, Slovakia has been offered to mediate oil supplies by Czechia and Croatia, only due to sanctions from the USA and the European Union, it could not be Russian oil.
However, it doesn't sit well with the Slovak government. It's about 30% more expensive. Slovaks and Hungarians don't feel this at all at the gas pump totems, and currently, fuel prices are higher there than in the Czech Republic and Poland, countries that have cut themselves off from the Russian oil pipeline. The processing giants Slovnaft and MOL are not losing out, even though they lose most of the profit from processing cheaper oil through an extraordinary tax (90% in Hungary and 70% in Slovakia).
The anniversary of the attack on Ukraine has thus become an opportunity for some Czech and Slovak politicians to celebrate Russia. However, Russians could continue selling oil to Eastern Europe happily if they had spared the brutal invasion with hundreds of thousands of deaths. Yet everything in Slovakia is blamed on Brussels and golden toilets. It's probably no coincidence that these terms are favored by Tomio Okamura as well.
