How (not) to help the Russian opposition

While PM Petr Fiala was in Washington, D.C., last month, he told the Hudson Institute that the CR helps people who support democracy and human rights and that this includes the "opposition in Russia and Belarus against their governments." That was on April 16. By the first week of May, Fiala's cabinet had dismissed the CR's Prague-based ambassador to Russia, Vítězslav Pivoňka, as of the end of this month. Pres. Petr Pavel's advisers, including Petr Kolář and Tomáš Petříček, don't want a replacement to be sent to Moscow. Yet Dir. Michal Koudelka of BIS counterintelligence told LN in March 2020 that Russians acting under diplomatic cover in Prague get much of their information through routine communications with politicians, journalists and businessmen. The world has changed, he said, and what was secret 40 years ago is now publicly available. If it works for the Russians in Prague, it should probably work for the Czechs in Moscow. But someone would need to be there to help organize it.