All news

Failure to slam neo-Nazis in Kiev sure sign something wrong with EU — Czech president

Something is going wrong with Ukraine and with the EU, Milos Zeman said commenting on a video of a crowd of several thousand demonstrating in Kiev’s Independence Square

PRAGUE, January 5. /TASS/. The fact that the European Union has refrained from saying at least something critical about the recent torch-light street procession by neo-Nazis in Kiev is a sure sign something is fundamentally wrong with the EU, Czech President Milos Zeman said on a local radio station. The procession and the way it had been prepared looked pretty much like Nazi parades in Hitler’s Germany before World War II.

“Something is going wrong with Ukraine. On the Internet I saw a video of a crowd of several thousand demonstrating in Kiev’s Independence Square. They were carrying portraits of Stepan Bandera. I saw that portrait for the first time. He (Bandera) reminded me of Reinhard Heydrich (the chief of Nazi Germany’s main security office and acting Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia — TASS),” Zeman said.

“Something is going wrong with Ukraine and something is going wrong with the European Union, which has failed to protest that demonstration,” Zeman said.

In the same radio broadcast Zeman criticized the Czech Republic’s participation in sanctions against Russia.

“The Czech Republic demonstrates its readiness to cater to other countries’ likes,” he said. In his opinion the sanctions are “blind consent with the opinions of larger and stronger countries.”

Zeman for the first time appeared on the air of a popular commercial radio station, F-1 (Frekvence1). He is going to participate in the Presidential Press-Club program created especially for him at least four times a year. Zeman had declined the invitation of being interviewed on a social and legal affairs radio station that was going to broadcast only pre-recorded versions of the program.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, democracy and rule of law, Konstantin Dolgov, said that torchlight parades in Ukraine were clear evidence of further movement along the Nazis’ path.

During the march in Kiev nationalists attacked a correspondent and operator of Russia’s television channel Life News.

“All that happened in the center of civilized Europe” Dolgov said. “Apparently, the marchers were aware of how defective their own views are. Is there any other explanation for their attacks against Russian journalists who were doing their professional duty? Or was it a manifestation of care for the freedom of expression and purity of speech in Ukraine?”

“These are systemic crude violations of human rights running counter to Ukraine’s international obligations. Surely, there are certain lessons that the West might teach Ukraine” Dolgov said.