The Czech foreign minister received the Ukrainian ambassador to Prague Monday after the envoy slammed a New Year speech by a Czech far-right parliament speaker denigrating war-ravaged Ukraine.
The row came just weeks after Czech billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s new government assumed office in mid-December, which has raised questions about the NATO member state’s future ties to the EU and provision of aid to Kyiv.
Babis’s ANO movement, which won October general elections, allied with two eurosceptic parties, the far-right SPD and right-wing Motorists, to form a coalition government replacing a centre-right, pro-Ukraine cabinet.
SPD leader Tomio Okamura, who became the Czech Republic’s first-ever far-right parliament speaker last November, called for an end to military and financial aid to Ukraine in a New Year’s message published on X.
In his inflammatory speech, Okamura said Prague would no longer finance what he called “war business” in the country that has been battling a Russian invasion since 2022.
He claimed this business benefited “foreign companies and governments” as well as “Ukrainian thieves around the (President Volodymyr) Zelensky junta” he accused of abusing aid to “build golden toilets.”
“Let them steal, but not our money. And let’s not allow such a country to be an EU member,” he said.
Ukrainian ambassador Vasyl Zvarych then slammed Okamura’s “hateful” and “absolutely unacceptable” statements as “his personal stance obviously formed under the influence of Russian propaganda.”
“I met Ukrainian ambassador to the Czech Republic, Vasyl Zvarych, today,” Foreign Minister Petr Macinka said Monday in a statement obtained by AFP, without calling the meeting a summoning.
‘No right to mentor us’
Macinka, chairman of the Motorists, said they “reflected upon sentiments in a part of Czech society” and that the meeting was held in a “serious atmosphere.”
He added he would call his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha over the matter on Tuesday.
Ukrainian parliament speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk earlier labelled Okamura’s speech “an example of ignorance, manipulation and cynicism.”
Czech opposition parties, which formed the previous government, want to initiate a parliamentary vote to remove Okamura, which is unlikely to succeed.
Shortly after being elected parliament speaker, Okamura controversially ordered the removal of the Ukrainian flag from the building where it had been hoisted by the previous pro-European government in solidarity with the war-ravaged nation.
On Monday, Babis dismissed Okamura’s discourse as “a speech of the SPD chairman talking mainly to his voters.”
He later said the Ukrainian ambassador has “no right to mentor us.”
Babis has previously voiced scepticism over a Czech-led drive to supply artillery shells to Ukraine, under way since 2024.
He will nonetheless travel to Paris on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the so-called “coalition of the willing”, a group of Western countries supporting Ukraine.