You're reading: Agence France-Presse: Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia claimed over 400 lives

Agence France-Presse: Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia claimed over 400 lives

Published Aug. 9, 2018 at 9:26 am

In this file photo taken in August 1968 in Prague, youth gather on a street during confrontations between demonstrators and the Warsaw Pact troops and tanks, who invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the so-called Prague Spring reform and re-establish a totalitarian regime. Czechs mark on Aug. 21, 50 years since Soviet invasion crushed Prague Spring.

Photo by AFP

The day that Soviet-led armies rolled into communist Czechoslovakia to put an end to a pro-democracy movement changed Milan Tesar’s life.

“I saw tanks coming down this road here. I threw a stone in their direction and then I heard the bullets whizz by,” he told AFP in the small town of Hostivice just west of Prague.