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One of the two new people recently placed on Czechia's national sanctions list, 35-year-old Artem Marchevsky, has said that he intends to legally challenge the decision to put him on the list. Speaking to Czech daily Deník N through his lawyer, he said that he did not pay off any politicians and that his lawyers are already preparing a lawsuit to defend him against the claims that he tried to influence the upcoming European Parliament elections.

The Czech government added three new names to its sanctions list last week — as well as Artem Marchevsky, his close associate Viktor Medvedchuk, another Ukrainian politician and businessman with close ties to Russia, and the pro-Kremlin Prague-based news website Voice of Europe were also placed on the list — following the uncovering of a Russian-organised network that was attempting to influence the European Parliament elections in various countries. The Czech counterintelligence agency, BIS, discovered that cash was being handed over to anti-establishment politicians from countries such as Germany, Belgium and France by the Prague-based pro-Russian network.

Some 5,297 cases of whooping cough have been recorded so far this year in Czechia up to the end of March, the most in a single calendar year since 1960, shortly after the whooping cough vaccine was introduced. There were 1,044 new cases last week, a slight decrease from the previous week, which the State Health Institute attributes to the Easter holidays when children were off from school.

Two elderly people infected with whooping cough have died this year. A third of those infected are young people aged 15 to 19. Some 85 children under one year of age, who constitute a very high-risk group, have also been infected.

This year's March was the warmest in Czechia since 1961, the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute revealed on social media site X on Tuesday. The average temperature for the month was 7 degrees Celsius, 3.8 degrees higher than the average between 1991 and 2020. This is the second month in a row to break a temperature record; February was also unusually warm with an average temperature of 5.7 degrees Celsius, 6.1 degrees higher than the long-term average between 1991 and 2020.

Czechia is not sufficiently prepared for crises and other extraordinary situations, says the Supreme Audit Office in an annual report for last year published on Tuesday.

The auditors said that the responsible institutions underestimated many events, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, and did not draw lessons from them; in some cases such agencies took formal steps without substantial results.

The Supreme Audit Office also said that it was likely that the state will repeat similar mistakes at critical moments; this could lead to significant damage and wasted funding and may endanger the health of the population.