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Several hundred Czech farmers  joined their European counterparts in a protest against high energy costs, cheap goods from Ukraine, excessive bureaucracy and the European Union's agricultural policies on Wednesday. Around 1,600 farmers are estimated to have joined the protest ride mainly in the regions and at border crossing points. Traffic in Prague should not be significantly affected. The protests are being held ahead of a scheduled European Council meeting on Thursday. Farmers from Poland, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium are also staging protest rides.

The ruling coalition has slammed ANO leader Andrej Babiš for undermining the government’s foreign policy and presenting a security risk through his pacifist statements. At a special session of the lower house, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said the opposition party should make it clear whether it stands with the free West or with Putin.  Interior Minister Vít Rakušan accused Babis of using fear marketing to win political support ahead of the European elections and suggested that Babiš is playing, albeit unwittingly, the role of a Trojan horse in a hybrid war.

While the opposition ANO party originally backed all of the government’s initiatives in support of Ukraine - military, financial and humanitarian - its leader has increasingly started talking about the need to support peace negotiations.

The Prague Faculty of Arts of Charles University, which was the target of a deadly attack by a lone shooter last December, has started introducing measures to increase security. Changes are being made in the entrance lobby so that people entering the building will be under bigger scrutiny and there are plans to improve the existing camera system and introduce panic buttons that people can use in an emergency. The faculty is also planning an autumn drill to prepare students and employees for crisis situations . Thursday will mark three months since the tragic incident in which a student of the school shot 14 people dead and wounded 25 before committing suicide.

The governor of the Moravia-Silesia Region, Jan Krkoška from the opposition ANO party, is accused of large-scale bribery within an organized criminal group, Denik.cz reported. The case, which is 12 years old and will be heard in court this week, involves around 200 people, According to the National Centre for Combating Organised Crime, doctors accepted bribes from pharmaceutical companies in return for prescribing their drugs whenever possible. In total, the bribes amounted to approximately CZK 12 million. The case concerns a period between 2009 and 2012 when Jan Krkoška worked for the pharmaceutical company Interchemia Prague. If convicted he could face up to 10 years in prison.