Two years ago, when the Azerbaijani army showed off their Czech Dana howitzers and Vampire rocket launchers in a promotional video, it attracted extraordinary media attention: the Czech Republic does not officially export military equipment to this country. The arms branch of the Czechoslovak Group immediately rushed to make an official statement that, in accordance...
The management board of the Russian-led International Investment Bank (IIB) held its first meeting in its new headquarters, Budapest, this week. The move of IIB from Moscow to Budapest has been controversial since it was announced: experts, historians and the media have been worried that the bank would be a tool for the Kremlin to plant spies...
Children marching in raincoats with gas masks over their faces. It is a memory that comes to the minds of people who went to school in the Czech Republic before 1989. After the Soviet Union break-up, the picture of national defence education disappeared from the life of schools, just as compulsory Russian classes. The memory...
School celebrations, patriotic marches and national holidays. All accompanied by ever-present weapons and green uniforms. In countries of the Central Europe patriotism increasingly means militarism, and civil values are being displaced by the cult of weapons and combat. Nobody controls this movement. VSquare special report shows, that states are supporting amateur militarists on an unprecedented...
In 2008, an attempt to decommission part of Albania’s aging, deadly stockpile of Cold War-era munitions went horribly wrong. At about noon on March 15, a series of explosions at a facility in the village of Gërdec sent fireballs into the sky, artillery shells into homes, and shockwaves slamming into the nearby capital, Tirana. The...
Czech President Miloš Zeman likes to joke about shooting journalists. The veteran politician, who is running for reelection this week, recently earned international opprobrium when, sporting a faux assault rifle, he figuratively took aimat the press. As it turns out, if Zeman ever wants to make good on his threats, his chief financial backer may have...
