Ondrej Soukup: The level of Russian influence on society in the Czech Republic has sharply decreased over the past two years
23.02.2024
Ondrej Soukup
As you know, in recent years, primarily on the eve of the Ukrainian-Russian war, the Kremlin’s attempts to influence people’s consciousness have gained huge proportions all over the world. How do you assess the results of the fight against Russian influence in EU countries over the past two years? The Newssky correspondent has asked by Ondrej Soukup, a journalist of the Czech Radio in Prague, to comment.
Russian influence on society has had a tragic effect, and it has declined dramatically in the last two years, not only, but perhaps even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
What exactly influenced the slowing down of the influence, because during the presidential campaign this topic somehow always came up?
There was no huge financial motivation for its development because the Czech government removed Rosatom from plans to build a nuclear power plant in Dukovany, as well as due to the scandal with Russian terrorists or secret agents who blew up ammunition warehouses in Vrbetice. So even before a full-scale invasion, the impact was quite limited. Later, even more, because our society was almost unanimous in rejecting the war in Ukraine and condemning Russian aggression. It was a national consensus.
What is the situation today?
On the other hand, two years later, some people are again ready to accept Russian propaganda. Kremlin narratives are being activated again. In part, these are the same people who have been known since 2015, who are hysterical about the migration wave and talk about the migration crisis and the Islamization of Europe. You know, all those things. They later denied that there was such a thing as a pandemic, and, of course, vaccination is a conspiracy by big pharma and such. And these same people now say: well, you know, this is a strange war, and it’s none of our business. It is Russia at war with the United States. So, we don’t need to spend money on all these things. In that sense, this influence exists. We have no hard evidence that this is in any way orchestrated by Russian players, but it is certainly also the work of Russian propaganda.
Maryna Kovalchuk, Newssky’s correspondent (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland), head of the V5 Media project, and deputy editor-in-chief, contributed.
