ROB CAMERON

A 16-year-old girl Scout pictured standing up to a far-right skinhead has told the BBC she was not afraid of neo-Nazis and wanted more young people to stand up to fascism. Lucie Myslikova, a film and animation student from the Czech city of Brno, was captured in her uniform confronting a shaven-headed demonstrator.

The Czech lower house is to begin debating a bill to introduce same-sex marriage. If successful, the Czech Republic would become the first country in the former eastern bloc to allow gay people to marry – similar legislation was introduced in Slovenia, but was later overturned in a referendum. However even some prominent gay politicians are against.

“Populism is not the only way to resolve frustrations,” said Zuzana Caputova. Rays of spring sunshine poured through the windows of a Bratislava café for her first TV interview with the international media since she was elected Slovakia’s first female president. She’s a liberal, pro-EU figure using words like “truth”, “tolerance” and “compassion” – a rarity these days in Central Europe.

Women in the Czech Republic may soon be able to take non-gendered versions of their surnames, after MPs backed a change in the law. In Czech, the ending ová is added automatically to almost all female surnames, even foreign ones, and they can only be dropped in very limited circumstances. It’s been that way for centuries … but could be about to change.

A brown bear that injured five people during a rampage in a Slovak town has been shot dead, Environment Minister Tomas Taraba says. However, opposition politicians believe hunters may have shot a different bear, and are calling for answers. Controlling Slovakia’s bear population has become a highly politicised issue under the new populist-nationalist government.

Czech MPs have approved an amendment tightening gun legislation, a month after the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. The amendment – which was proposed before the killings – must still pass through the Senate and be signed by the president, and will not come into force until 2026. It’s far from revolutionary, so would it even have made a difference?

Born Marie Jana Körbelová in Prague, Madeleine Albright (1937 – 2022) spent the war in London. After the Communist coup of 1948, her family emigrated to the U.S., where she later became the first female Secretary of State. “What I learnt as a result of being born here was that when the United States was not involved – as in Munich – terrible things happened.”

Not sure whether Bono has ever been to Tirana but in 2004 it was still in a strange state of semi-awakening from the forty-year fever dream of Communist hardliner Enver Hoxha. The old street signs had been torn down – but Albania’s new authorities couldn’t agree on new ones. This made finding your way round the city a rather surreal experience.

The anniversary of the Velvet Revolution on November 17th 1989 is now a national holiday. It’s an opportunity to look back on a defining moment and take the temperature of Czech (and Slovak) society. For the 20th anniversary, those who were at the heart of the revolution – including the shy playwright who became president – shared their memories and thoughts.

A Czech travel agency is offering package holidays for people nostalgic for the trade union perks of Communist Czechoslovakia, when factory workers were bussed off to recuperate from the daily grind. For a modest sum, guests can stay at a grim-looking hotel in Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains, to relive the sights, sounds, and smells of pre-1989 holidays.

Václav Havel died at his country home – Hrádeček – on the morning of Sunday, December 18th, 2011. He’d appeared a few months previously at the unveiling of a statue to Woodrow Wilson, looking frail and gaunt. However his death – at the age of 75 – still came as a great shock. Havel’s state funeral five days later was a momentous and immensely moving experience.

A company has started offering whistle-stop tours of ostentatious villas, over-budget public construction projects and the echoey corridors of local government to highlight the problem of rampant corruption. “Corruption is not just money spent in the wrong way. Corruption is trust misused,” said Petr Sourek, founder of ‘Corrupt Tour’ – the world’s first corruption tour agency.

Scotland went to the polls on September 18th, 2014 to decide whether to leave the United Kingdom and begin a new chapter as an independent state. The only country in Europe that has peacefully divided in recent decades is Czechoslovakia, which split into two on January 1st, 1993, without a drop of blood being spilt. So what advice would Czechs and Slovaks give the Scots?

Thousands of people have protested against Czech President Miloš Zeman on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which ended communist rule. Demonstrators carried football-style red cards as a warning to Mr Zeman, while others threw eggs. One accidentally hit the German president. Many are angry with Mr Zeman, who they see as too sympathetic to Russia.

The government of the Czech Republic is making a new push to use ‘Czechia’ – the official short name of the country in English – pointing out that few people say ‘the Federal Republic of Germany’ instead of ‘Germany’, or ‘the Russian Federation’ for ‘Russia’. However, the short form is struggling to find recognition – both at home and abroad.

A new unit has been set up at the Czech interior ministry to counter the spread of fake news and disinformation. The Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats will seek to alert people to stories and posts that are demonstrably false, much of it published on either Russian or pro-Russia websites. But not everyone is convinced it can succeed.

By the time Ai Weiwei unveiled his epic ‘Law Of The Journey’ at Prague’s National Gallery, Europe’s refugee crisis had largely disappeared from the front pages. But the flow of people continued, and with it opposition – especially in Central Europe – to providing shelter. The Czech government’s attitude, the artist said, was unacceptable, “because it’s morally wrong.”

Plans to rehabilitate a pre-war Jewish cemetery in the Czech town of Prostějov have run into fierce local opposition, torpedoed by deliberate misinformation and anti-Semitism. Tombstones from the town’s old Jewish cemetery were looted and handed out to locals in 1943 – and many of them still pave people’s backyards and cellars.

Czech voters are likely to hand power to controversial billionaire Andrej Babiš, the country’s second-richest man who ran on an anti-corruption platform but is himself under investigation. The campaign has been dominated by big themes including euro adoption, immigration and the relationship with Russia, but also some more obscure ones, such as the price of butter.

Czechs go to the polls this weekend in the first round of a presidential election. The two-day vote is being seen as a referendum on the outspoken 73-year-old incumbent Milos Zeman, and the direction of the country. Zeman has angered many with his tilt towards Moscow and Beijing, and not everyone cares for his sarcastic – and politically incorrect – humour.

A class photo from a primary school in the northern city of Teplice led to a torrent of abuse and even death threats. The photo, of first graders at ZŠ Plynárenská primary school, showed rows of happy, smiling children with one difference – only a handful of them were white. Teplice is home to a large Roma minority, and also has many immigrants from Vietnam and Gulf states.

In 2018 allegations were made by a former Czechoslovak spy that the then opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been a paid informer for the country’s communist era secret police, the StB. Mr Corbyn emphatically denied the claims, but a few sheaves of old paper still have the power to throw lives into turmoil.

The murder of reporter Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová convulsed Slovak society. The wave of public anger and disgust led to the fall of Prime Minister Robert Fico and ultimately the election of liberal Zuzana Čaputová as president. There was also hope (short-lived) that Slovakia could untie the Gordian knot between high-level politics and endemic corruption.

Czechs are marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, when a 250,000-strong invasion force from five Warsaw Pact countries invaded the country from the north, east and south. They were sent by Moscow to crush the so-called Prague Spring – the liberalising reforms of Czechoslovak communist leader Alexander Dubcek.

Czech counter-intelligence has issued stark warnings of intensified espionage activity by Russia and China. Both countries are pursuing a long-term strategy of undermining the West, according to the Security Information Service (BIS). Moscow has continued its hybrid warfare strategy to gain influence over this EU and Nato member, it says.

Thousands have attended protest rallies across Slovakia in memory of murdered journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, shot in a targeted killing a year ago. Kuciak had been investigating alleged corruption linked to Italian organised crime – a story which would, after his death, bring down the government. It remains unclear who ordered the killings.

Mobile operators say the number of people who attended a demonstration against Prime Minister Andrej Babiš on Sunday was just shy of 300,000, making it the largest mass protest since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Protestors want the billionaire businessman to step down over a criminal investigation into allegations of EU subsidy fraud.

The so-called Velvet Revolution precipitated the end of communism in Czechoslovakia. Three locations in Prague symbolise the regime and its downfall. They include a controversial statue to Ivan Stepanovich Konev, the Soviet general whose forces liberated much of the country in 1945, but also oversaw the brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising.

The thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution against the Communist regime has been overshadowed by contemporary protests against the country’s prime minister, Andrej Babiš. An estimated 200,000 people packed Letná plain – scene of the largest protests in 1989 – while Mr Babiš was heckled as he lit a candle to students beaten by riot police on Národní street.

Slovakia votes on Saturday in its first general election since an investigative journalist and his fiancée were murdered in 2018. The shooting of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová shocked the nation and toppled PM Robert Fico, but his Smer-SD party remains in office. Polls are tight, and support has swelled for an ultra-nationalist party.

A Czech politician in hiding amid allegations of a Russian assassination plot says he believes the threat against him is credible and he fears for his life. Three Prague politicians are under 24-hour police guard because of the alleged plot to poison them – claims categorically denied by Moscow. The BBC spoke to him from an undisclosed location under police guard.

Initially praised for its Covid response – including a cottage industry sewing hundreds of thousands of homemade face masks – by autumn 2020 the Czech Republic had some of the worst infection and mortality statistics in the world. In November, the Czech Army was called in to transform an exhibition grounds on the northern outskirts of Prague into a field hospital.

Czech authorities have pleaded with people to respect Covid restrictions over Easter. The plan is for children to go back to school in a week’s time, but they say that could be jeopardised if people mingle now in big numbers. The infection numbers are now falling, albeit slowly. The country is no longer at the very apex of the European charts. But it’s not far behind.

Slovakia was the second country in the EU to order Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine – but the decision caused political turmoil as the mercurial prime minister Igor Matovič flew to Moscow to make the purchase without informing anyone. Slovakia’s medicines regulator refused to certify the vaccine – which was not approved in the EU – so supplies of Sputnik sat unused on the shelves.

Czech-Russian relations were already chilly before the invasion of Ukraine; today they are icy, verging on frozen. Revelations that Moscow’s notorious GRU spy agency had blown up a Czech arms dump in 2014 led to a spate of tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions. The annual flashpoint is the anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Czechoslovakia – or rather the eastern two-thirds of it.

The people of the Czech Republic go to the polls this weekend, as billionaire-turned-politician Andrej Babiš seeks another four years in office. Mr Babiš, leader of the populist ANO party, faces a tough challenge from the centre-right opposition and also has the far right nipping at his heels. And his fate is intertwined with the health of ailing President Miloš Zeman.

Petr Pavel was an unlikely choice for president of a country which has shied away from militarism. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed everything. Pavel – once head of the Czech armed forces and number two at NATO – defeated former PM Andrej Babiš by a clear margin in January 2023, and gave his first international TV interview to the BBC.

Slovaks are voting in early elections following the collapse of the former centre-right government. Leading most polls is the populist SMER party of Robert Fico, who has pledged an immediate end to Slovak military support for Ukraine. But Fico’s former party colleague turned rival, Peter Pellegrini, is also likely to play a decisive role in forming the new government.

Whooping cough is on the rise across Europe, and the Czech Republic is no exception. However, a week marked by confusion surrounding official guidance and a controversial public appearance by Prague’s mayor left some wondering if anything was learned from Covid-19. By the end of 2024, the number of infections had risen tenfold to 36,000.

Peter Pellegrini has been elected president of Slovakia. A former prime minister, Mr Pellegrini is an ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico, and shares the PM’s opposition to arming Ukraine. Mr Pellegrini’s campaign echoed some of Fico’s Moscow-friendly rhetoric, vowing after his victory “to ensure that Slovakia remains on the side of peace and not on the side of war”.

Robert Fico might have promised to send “not one more round of ammunition” to Ukraine, but he wasn’t speaking for all Slovaks. When the government cut off state-supplied military aid, citizens banded together, raising €1m for artillery shells within 48 hours. They included Otto Simko, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor and veteran of the Slovak National Uprising.

Slovakia’s populist government has caused alarm with plans to abolish the country’s public broadcaster, prompting renewed fears for the independence of the Slovak media. The move is being spearheaded by Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová, who previously co-hosted an online TV channel promoting pro-Russian narratives and disinformation about Covid.

Robert Fico describes himself as a leftist and a social democrat. But his Smer party is in government with the far-right, and his language is increasingly vitriolic and nationalist. He’s blamed the assassination attempt of May 2024 on the liberal opposition as well as his pro-peace stance, and says Vladimir Putin has been ‘wrongly demonised’ by the west.

Slovakia’s populist prime minister, Robert Fico, has claimed the opposition is planning a “Maidan”-style coup, referring to the popular uprising that toppled Ukraine‘s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. Fico, who survived an assassination attempt last May, quoted from what he said was a classified report ahead of a motion of no-confidence.

The Slovak government has approved a plan to shoot around a quarter of the country’s brown bears, after a man was mauled to death while walking in a forest. A total of 350 out of an estimated 1,300 animals will be culled under the plan. “We can’t live in a country where people are afraid to go into the woods,” Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters after a cabinet meeting.