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August 24, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 3
Zeman has long argued that the Czech Republic should focus on rebuilding its business links to its former overlord.
He has also praised Russian intervention in Syria (and criticised the US’s) and dismissed the Krem- lin’s incursions into eastern Ukraine, calling the conflict a civil war. Zeman shrugged off the an- nexation of the Crimea, calling it a “fait accom- pli”, and suggested that Russia merely financially compensate Ukraine.
As Mark Galeotti, a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague, wrote last year in Controlling Chaos: How Russia manages its political war in Europe, a report compiled for the European Council on Foreign Relations: “President Milos Zeman’s outspoken criticisms of Nato and the EU are gleefully repeated in Moscow’s propaganda campaigns throughout central Europe.”
Russia has been very successful in spreading its propaganda inside the Czech Republic, notably by
Russia's financial authorities are putting the economy on an "economic war" footing as sanctions bite
prepare in case harsher measures come in the autumn.
The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) said it will stop its regular foreign currency purchases on domes- tic market from August 23 until the end of Sep- tember 2018 in order to "increase the predictabil- ity of monetary authorities and lower the financial market volatility."
getting online disinformation into popular local websites such as Parlamentni listy.
Rethinking Marshal Konev
Also on August 21, Prague 6 city district hall is set to unveil three bronze plaques in Czech, Russian and English at the Dejvice statue of Marshal Ivan Konev.
The plaques replace a marker that referred to Konev as a Soviet and Czech hero. There has long been much debate among Czechs as to how much of a hero Konev really was.
The new plaques state that Konev led the First Ukrainian Front that liberated north, central and east Bohemia and went on to become the Eastern force that was first to enter Prague on May 9, 1945 as WWII neared its end. They also describe how the marshal later led the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956; helped build the Berlin Wall in 1961; and per- sonally oversaw the intelligence gathering performed before the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
CBR announced the measure as Russian assets come under mounting sanction pressure and investors are getting increasingly nervous. On Au- gust 23 Russian ruble declined to RUB69-RUB70 to US dollar on the news that the regulator might continue to purchase foreign currency despite ruble's continuous weakening.
In recent months the CBR has been buying record amounts of currency as part of a drive to build up reserves level back to $500bn.
But with sanctions pressure building since the April 6 round of sanctions the Ministry of Finance was already planning to scale back its actions on the currency market this month. It said in July it will reduce purchases of foreign currency spend- ing circa RUB348bn ($5.1bn) on the purchase of foreign currency in the domestic market in July- early August, the ministry said.