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Russia will continue to be a source of threats and risks to the security of Czechia and Europe in the coming decades unless Russian society undergoes a fundamental transformation, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský said in relation to a report on revising relations with Russia approved by the government on Wednesday.

In the document, cited by the Czech News Agency, the Czech Foreign Ministry also states that a number of anti-Russian sanctions will remain in force in the coming years. It also says that the Russian leadership will continue to regard the Czech Republic, the European Union and NATO as its enemies.

According to the document, Czech policy towards Russia will be determined, among other things, by tasks contributing to the victory of Ukraine, cooperating with allies, contributing to Russia’s international isolation and minimising its influence in Czechia.

The number of Czechs who support the right of homosexuals to adopt children and enter into a registered partnership or marriage has increased over the past four years, suggests a poll by the CVVM agency published on Wednesday.

According to the survey, 83 percent of respondents are in favour of a registered partnership between homosexuals, while 58 percent said gay people should have equal rights to marry.

The survey also shows that 77 percent of Czechs are in favour of homosexuals to adopt their partner’s children, while 63 percent support their right to adopt children from children’s home.

According to CVVM, homosexuals have the most support among women, young people under 29 and people who consider their standard of living to be good.

The statues of three apostles that were damaged by vandals last July have returned to Prague’s Astronomical Clock on Old Town Square after undergoing a renovation that cost CZK 35,000.

Last year a vandal broke the glass door separating the room with the apostles from the chapel and damaged the statues of St. Philip, St. Thomas and Jude the Apostle. During the repair work, which lasted for two weeks, the famous clock operated as usual, with three of its windows empty.

Prague City Hall recently also commissioned a new copy of the Astronomical Clock’s calendar that will replace the heavily criticised version from 2018.

President Petr Pavel named 93 new professors at a ceremony at Prague’s Carolinum on Wednesday. Among the academics who received the title were art historian Jiří Fajt and physicist Ivan Ošťádal, whom Pavel’s predecessor Miloš Zeman refused to appoint, citing what he said were serious transgressions in their pasts.

In 2021, a court ruled that the non-appointment of Ošťádal and Fajt as professors was not in accordance with the law. Mr. Zeman then failed in his appeals to the Supreme Administrative Court. Both academics have been waiting eight years to be made a professor.