Demonstration Against Inclination to Russia to Occur on Thursday

Million Moments for Democracy, a civic organization of pro-democratic nature, has announced a demonstration against the inclination of President Miloš Zeman and other Czech politicians towards Russia.

Planned on Thursday, demonstrations will be held in Prague and dozens of other cities, including Plzeň, Hradec Králové, Ústí nad Labem and Brno.

“Instead of supporting his own country, the president repeats the same fairy tales as pro-Russian disinformation sites and Russian propaganda. His continued presence in the office is a security threat to our republic,” said Benjamin Roll, chairman of the organization.

“We will meet on Wenceslas Square and in other cities across the Czech Republic and demand the end of President Zeman. This is the only chance for our country to get out of the current marasmus state in time. We call on all citizens of the Czech Republic to join the protest in their municipalities,” was stated in a Tuesday press release of Million Moments.

President Miloš Zeman was criticized by the opposition for a speech on Sunday, in which he said that two investigative versions were being worked on in the case of the explosion of an ammunition depot in Vrbětice in 2014.

First Deputy Prime Minister Jan Hamáček (ČSSD) noted on Monday that there was only one investigative version, which was associated with the movement of members of unit 29155 of the Russian military intelligence service GRU.

Prime minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) made a similar statement on Monday after an evening meeting with Zeman in Lány.

Babiš’s conflict of interest also contributes to the disintegration of the Czech Republic, Million Moments notes. The organization brought up the final audit report of the European Commission, according to which the prime minister co-decides on the direction of EU subsidies and at the same time controls the holding Agrofert.

Michael Kocáb, former minister for human rights and national minorities and a co-author of the petition for a constitutional action against Zeman, or Eugenie Číhalová, representative of the Russian minority in the government council for national minorities, will speak in Prague during the demonstration.

According to Million Moments, anti-coronavirus hygiene measures and recommendations will be followed during the event. The organization prepared a guideline for the participants, in which they listed all the measures needed to be observed, including maintaining safe distances, wearing respirators and having a negative coronavirus test.

As of now, 17,7 thousand people responded to a Facebook event created by Million Moments. 14,3 thousand responded with “Interested” and 3,4 thousand with “Going”.