ROB CAMERON

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.

For decades, archaeologists have grappled with the identity of a 10th-Century skeleton discovered at Prague Castle. The remains were exploited by both the Nazis and Soviets for ideological purposes, claiming it as proof of a pre-existing Germanic – or Slavic – presence. But attempts to pin a clear ethnic label on a 1,000-year-old corpse perhaps reveal more about us than him.

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.

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.

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.

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.