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Repatriation flights have brought around 1,400 people back to Czechia from the Middle East since conflict erupted in the region, the minister of foreign affairs, Petr Macinka, said on CNN Prime News on Sunday. He said nearly 200 people had returned from Dubai on Saturday night.

Mr. Macinka said around 180 Czechs were currently stranded in Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh and about 140 in Qatar. As of Sunday, approximately 3,750 Czech citizens in the Middle East are listed in the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ voluntary registration system, though their number is constantly falling.

In addition to repatriation flights, Czechs are returning to the country on partially restored commercial flights, the minister told journalists.

The ANO party of Prime Minister Andrej Babis would have come first in elections in February with 34.5 percent of the vote, suggests a poll conducted by the Kantar agency for Czech Television published on Sunday. The Mayors and Independents would have come second on 15.5 percent, ahead of another opposition party, the Civic Democrats, who headed the last government, on 14.5 percent.

Coalition parties Freedom and Direct Democracy and the Motorists would have gained 6.5 percent and 5 percent, respectively. The Pirates enjoyed 9 percent support last month. Meanwhile a new party named Our Czechia would have got 3.5 percent and thus failed to reach the threshold of 5 percent.

The Czech government is set to ignore US calls to increase spending on defence from the announced CZK 155 billion, which amounts to 1.73 percent of GDP, Czech Television reported. The heads of all three coalition parties confirmed this ahead of a final vote on the 2026 state budget planned for next Wednesday.

Speaking at a security conference on Thursday, the US ambassador to Prague, Nicholas Merrick, said the amount Czechia planned to spend on defence would leave it far below its commitments from a NATO summit in the Hague last year (5 percent of GDP), and even below a pledge from another one in Cardiff in 2014 (2 percent).

The government headed by Andrej Babiš says there is no money to increase defence spending as it must fulfil other budgetary priorities.

Dust from the Sahara Desert has appeared over Czechia and should affect the country’s weather for a number of days, the Czech Institute of Hydro-Meteorology said. The sky should be duller and less blue, while sunrises and sunsets will be more colourful.

This is not a new phenomenon. In 2024 a smog alarm was even declared in Czechia due to the high concentration of Saharan dust in the air, while it last appeared in the country at the end of last month.