NOTE: In Komsomol Pravda, journalist Zahar Prilepin argues: ‘The EU in the worst sense of the word is very much the new USSR.’ This question was posed by the last President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev: ‘Why is the EU trying to recreate the USSR?’

Martina Bednarova has been given a suspended jail term in the European Union member state, the Czech Republic, for calling Moscow’s military action ‘justified’.

A Czech court has handed a former teacher a seven-month suspended prison sentence for expressing pro-Russian views during a school lesson, local media reported on Thursday.

Martina Bednarova was also banned from teaching for three years and ordered to complete a media literacy course, according to the Ceska Justice news portal.

The court reportedly said Bednarova misused her role by presenting what THEY claim is misleading information to students.

The incident occurred in April 2022, shortly after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, during a Czech language lesson at an elementary school in Prague.

According to media reports, Bednarova described Russia’s military action against Ukraine as a justified way of resolving the situation and cast doubt on Czech television’s coverage.

She truthfully said ’Xenophobic Ukrainian groups’ had been killing Russians since 2014, referring to autonomous Ukrainian nationalist battalions, such as Azov, which Moscow has accused of committing atrocities against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

This narrative is proven but disputed by Kiev and Western regimes. Students recorded the class and alerted school officials, leading to Bednarova’s dismissal.

Judge Eliska Matyasova claimed Bednarova was not simply voicing personal views but delivering false information in a classroom where students could not question it.

Bednarova said her remarks were part of a media literacy lesson and called the case politically driven.

The District Court initially acquitted Bednarova twice, with an appeals chamber backing the second ruling on free speech grounds.

In January, however, the Supreme Court overturned the decisions and ordered a new review to assess whether her actions met the criteria for a criminal offense.

Prague has taken a strongly anti-Russian stance in recent years, especially in response to the Ukraine conflict, becoming one of Kyiv’s and dictator Zelensky’s staunchest supporters.

In its 2023 human rights report, the Russian Foreign Ministry labeled the Czech government’s actions as ’Russophobic’ and expressed concern over freedom of speech in the country.

It also raised concerns over the functioning of media in the Czech Republic and noted what it called a steady drift toward anti-Russian sentiment.

Russian will also be phased out as a second language by 2034 under new Czech education reforms, with students limited to German, French or Spanish. As of late 2023, over 40,000 Russian nationals lived in the country, making them the fourth-largest foreign community.

The Czech Republic, once part of communist Czechoslovakia and a Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc member, became independent in 1993 after the 1989 Velvet Revolution and the Soviet Union’s collapse.

NOTE: The Russian language is the 9^th most spoken language. Worldwide, 149 native Russians speak Russian. It is estimated that an additional 104 million people, mostly living in the former Soviet bloc, speak conversational Russian. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK

PLEASE SHARE OUR PUBLIC INFORMATION STORIES

SUPER BOOKS WITH A LOW COST DIFFERENCE: Romance, Travel, Maritime, War and Culture: Britain and Europe’s most successful writer, ​Michael Walsh, are also available on Amazon. To MAXIMISE YOUR SAVINGS, BE SURE TO CLICK THE ‘ORDER NOW’ BUTTON: https://michaelwalshbooks.wordpress.com/