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Four Czech and Ukrainian historians and archivists have presented a newly published collection of documents entitled "The Great Terror in Ukraine 1937-1938: Persecution of the Czech Minority".  The book is the result of several years of Czech-Ukrainian cooperation, which began in 2008 with the signing of a framework agreement on cooperation between the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the State Security Service of Ukraine. The publication contains a representative sample of hundreds of annotated documents published in the Russian original and a Czech translation, which show the form of Soviet state terror applied against the Czech minority in Ukraine. Among the documents are materials relating to the largest mass execution of people of Czech origin on the territory of the Soviet Union on 28 September 1938 in Zhitomir, when eighty people were executed, including 78 Czechs.

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.