Kiev/Moscow, Jan 29 (CTK) – The result of the Czech presidential runoff, won by President Milos Zeman, is “incomprehensible and tragic,” Russian historian Andrei Zubov writes in a commentary for the Ukrainian server Obozrevatel headlined “This time, no tanks were needed.”
Zubov writes that one-half of Czechs prefer “a tyrannical dictatorship and xenophobia”.
Four years ago, Zubov attracted attention by his article in the paper Vedomosti, in which he likened the Russian approach to Crimea to the policy of Nazi Germany before World War Two.
He was then sacked from the Moscow diplomatic academy MGIMO.
In March 2014, Zubov was offered a post by many foreign universities, including the Brno-based Masaryk University.
However, Zubov decided to stay in Moscow.
One half of Czechs “are indifferent to the European values of political and civic freedoms and help for the close neighbours and distant ones, preferring the values of a tyrannical dictatorship and xenophobia,” Zubov said.
“This is just what was brought by the Soviet tanks to Czechoslovakia 50 years ago,” Zubov said.
For one-half of Czechs, the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989 is not their history, Zubov said.
“They are on the side of the politicians who openly support the Russian regime, making no secret of their solidarity with the 1968 Warsaw Pact action, openly calling the demise of the Communist Bloc and the USSR in 1990-1991 the biggest geopolitical disaster,” he added.
For one-half of Czechs, the Communist China is a model of a wise state arrangement. What future is being prepared by the new generation of Czechs? Zubov asks.
This time, Russian tanks will not be necessary. Everything will take place with its own momentum and in a respectful and generous fashion.
“However, for those of us whose hearts were with those who came to the Red Square in August 1968 with the billboard ‘Hands off Czechoslovakia’, the current choice of one-half of Czechs is incomprehensible and tragic,” Zubov said.
