Prague Society

25/09/2026

United States senator and Global Panel member Roger Wicker has made some strong comments about the Xi Jinping's meeting with US President Donald Trump.

GOP Sen. Roger Wicker (Miss.) slammed Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday, ahead of the Asian leader’s summit with President Trump in Washington, D.C. During remarks on the Senate floor, Wicker said that had the White House asked him for “advice,” he would have suggested President Trump .....

11/09/2026

https://www.politico.eu/article/china-state-firm-supplies-russia-materials-kamikaze-drones/

"A Chinese state-owned firm has supplied Russia with the materials required to build hundreds of kamikaze drones, according to internal Russian company shipping documents obtained by POLITICO.

The records, which have been reviewed by Western governments, provide the clearest evidence yet of a Chinese-state corporation continuing to aid a sanctioned company in the Kremlin’s military industrial complex.

The shipping and customs documents reveal the Chinese firm disguised the shipment of 46 tons of carbon-fibre chemicals to a subsidiary of Russia’s Rosatom earlier this year. The corporation develops the key components of the kamikaze drones Moscow used to attack a shopping mall in central Ukraine in August, killing at least 16 people."

21/08/2026

On Tuesday, 18 August, at Restaurant U Cedru in Prague 6-Bubeneč, the Prague Society for International Cooperation had the distinct honour of presenting the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award to H.E. Mr Pasi Tuominen, Ambassador of Finland, and H.E. Mr Vasyl Zvarych, Ambassador of Ukraine, in recognition of their outstanding commitment to international cooperation and the values that the Award seeks to honour.

The Prague Society also took the opportunity to bid bon voyage to H.E. Mr Pasi Tuominen as he concludes his posting in Prague, and to wish him every success and fulfilment in his future endeavours.

20/08/2026

Remembering Valentina Petrovna Pankina (Валентина Петровна Панкина)

Remembering Valentina Petrovna Pankina, the Soviet/Russian journalist, literary editor and translator, died in 2025, aged 94. Literaturnaya Gazeta reported her death in an obituary published on 8 April 2025, stating that she had died shortly before publication, but the obituary does not give the exact date of death.

She was born in 1930 and was a long-serving editor of Literaturnaya Gazeta, where she headed the department covering the literatures of the peoples of the USSR. The Russian State Archive of Literature and Art confirms her employment records there.

She was also the wife of Boris Dmitrievich Pankin, the Soviet ambassador to Sweden, Czechoslovakia and the United Kingdom and briefly acting Soviet foreign minister in 1991.

The following obituary was published in Literaturnaya Gazeta
“At the age of 95, Valentina Petrovna Pankina, a long-time employee of Literaturnaya Gazeta (LG) and editor of the Department of Literatures of the Peoples of the USSR from 1954 to 1967, has passed away.
At our editorial office, she quickly rose from a literary staff member to a member of the editorial board, where she was the only woman. Her greatest love was Central Asia. A graduate of the Oriental Department of the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State University, she knew Farsi/Tajik and Turkish, translated around 20 books into Russian, and was a member of the Translators’ Section of the Union of Soviet Writers.
Valentina Petrovna (on the left in the photo) knew how to be a friend. She was among the first to hear songs composed by her LG colleague Bulat Okudzhava, discovered Chingiz Aitmatov, and maintained close ties with Mikhail Svetlov and Vladimir Maximov.
For 72 years, she was the wife of the legendary editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda, later ambassador and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, B. D. Pankin; she travelled around the world and remained active in her profession for a long time.
Our heartfelt condolences to Boris Dmitrievich and Alexey Borisovich Pankin.”

17/08/2026

Aliaksandr Milinkevich, the physicist-turned-politician who became the unified candidate of Belarus’s democratic opposition against Aliaksandr Lukashenka in the 2006 presidential election, has died at the age of 79.

The former Sakharov Prize laureate ran against Aliaksandr Lukashenka for the Belarusian presidency in 2006.

13/08/2026

The Czech Republic under Beijing's surveillance. Chinese cameras monitor the country's critical infrastructure and military weapons depots.
Chinese security cameras are considered risky by cyber experts. However, this does not deter Czech institutions from purchasing these cameras this year. They can be found in military facilities and on the facade of the Prague headquarters of the cyber office, which warns against them.

Čínské bezpečnostní kamery považují kyberodborníci za rizikové. Ani to však české instituce neodrazuje od toho, aby i letos tyto kamery nakupovaly. Najdeme je v armádních...

17/07/2026

China Detains Businessman with Ties to Czechoslovak Group

The Seznam Zprávy website reported on Wednesday that China had detained a Czech citizen at the end of June. A few hours later, Deník N added that he was a businessman working with Eldis, a company that belongs to Michal Strnad's CSG arms group. The man arrived in the country at the invitation of Chinese authorities to certify airport radars. Czech security forces are working on the theory that Beijing could try to use his detention to exchange Yang Yiming, a Prague correspondent for the party newspaper Guangming Zhipao, suspected of espionage. Czech authorities accused him of working for a foreign power in January this year and he is now awaiting trial.

Čína zadržela českého občana. České bezpečnostní složky pracují s verzí, že bude tlačit na jeho výměnu za propagandistu Jang I-mina, který sedí v Česku ve vazbě s obviněním ze špionáže.