It has become illegal to support Russia in the Czech Republic

Supporting Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is now socially and morally beyond the pale in most of the western world. Even being wary of arms deliveries to Ukraine is, in most places, considered wrong. But in the Czech Republic things are being taken a step further, as those who express controversial views of the war are prosecuted under legal restrictions on free speech. 

A young man who attended an anti-government protest in Prague earlier this year wearing a backpack with a ‘Z’ sticker and a jacket with the emblem of the Wagner Group stitched onto the sleeve has been handed a suspended six-month prison sentence, fined, and – in bizarrely medieval fashion – banned from staying within Prague city limits for a year. Police detained him after spotting the symbols on his backpack and put him under investigation for ‘denying, questioning, approving and justifying genocide,’ which is a criminal offence.