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On August 25th, 1968, just four days after Russian tanks rolled through Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring reform movement, eight brave Russians staged a daring protest on Moscow’s Red Square, unfurling banners that read “Hands off Czechoslovakia!” and “Shame to the Invaders!”. They were quickly surrounded by communist police, beaten up and arrested. Most of them spent years locked up in prison, labour camps or in psychiatric institutions.

Ivan Hartl has been living in London since the late 1960s. From there he helped run samizdat literature into his native Czechoslovakia with Palach Press, as well as promoting internationally the persecuted rock band The Plastic People of the Universe.

Ladislav Hornan, who is chairman of the British Czech and Slovak Association, has enjoyed a very successful career and led one of the UK’s top accountancy firms for many years. He came from a relatively privileged background in Prague, where his mother Magdalena Horňanová was a music professor and writer. Unusually, Mr. Hornan returned regularly to Czechoslovakia after emigrating in 1968. Until, that is, he spent almost a month in a Prague jail on spying charges in the mid-1980s. In a meeting room at his company’s City of London building he shared

Czechs are marking the 49th anniversary of the death of student Jan Palach who set himself on fire on January 16, 1969, in protest to the growing public apathy to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He died three days later; he was just 20 years old. A number of events were scheduled to honour his memory and sacrifice including a memorial ceremony at the Philosophy Faculty at Charles University on Tuesday afternoon.

Fifty years ago on January 5, 1968, the news came out of the ongoing central committee party meeting of the Czechoslovak communist party that Slovak, Alexander Dubček, had been chosen as the new party boss. Dubček was little known in Czech circles but his name would soon be known around the country and the world.

Moscow has issued a sharp protest over the vandalizing of a statue of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev in Prague which was spray painted with the dates 1956, 1961, 1968 and 2017 earlier this week. The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the act as vandalism and an insult to those who had laid down their lives in the liberation of Czechoslovakia.

The incident happened shortly after an offensive article appeared on a Russian web which said the Czech Republic should be grateful for the 1968 Soviet-led invasion which had brought the country 20 years of peace and stability. On a state visit to Russia, President Zeman protested against the insult to his country and Russian Prime Minister Medvedev publicly distanced himself from the article.

Marshal Konev is perceived as a controversial figure in the Czech Republic. After being present on several fronts in WWII, Konev was involved in the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and was also present in Berlin for the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

In his twenty years as editor-in-chief of the publishers Faber and Faber, Robert McCrum introduced some of the best Czech writers, including Václav Havel, Milan Kundera and Josef Škvorecký, to English speaking readers. This was in the days before the fall of communism and his visits to Czechoslovakia involved a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities. A few days ago Robert McCrum returned to the Czech Republic, to see how the country is faring on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the Soviet-led invasion. He spoke to David Vaughan.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitriv Mededev has distanced himself from the article published on the website of Russian state-wide television channel Zvezda on Tuesday, maintaining that Czechs should be grateful that Soviet-led forces invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

During a meeting with Czech president Miloš Zeman in Russia, Mr Medvedev said the article didn’t reflect the position of the Russian leadership and expressed the personal opinion of the author.

The article in question claimed that the Soviet led forces had prevented the West from orchestrating a coup in the then-communist country by means, it claimed, which were delayed until 1989.

An article published on the website of Russian state-wide television channel Zvezda on Tuesday has drawn very sharp responses from Czech politicians, including Miloš Zeman, the Czech head of state. He called the article, which argued that Czechs should be grateful for the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, an insult to the nation.

Czech politicians have slammed an article published on the website of Russian state-wide television channel Zvezda, run by the Russian Defense Ministry, on Tuesday, maintaining that Czechs should be grateful that Soviet-led forces invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The article in question claimed that the forces had prevented the West from orchestrating a coup in the then-communist country by means, it claimed, which were delayed until 1989.

On the contrary, the Soviet-led invasion in 1968 crushed the period of democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia known as the Prague Spring. The events of 1968 ushered in the so-called Normalisation period during the 1970s and Soviet troops would remain on Czechoslovak soil for more than 20 years.

The article, written by Leonid Maslovskij, caught many off guard as it was published the same day Czech President Miloš Zeman met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Sochi and later travelled to Moscow. According to iDnes, Mr Zeman, widely seen as a pro-Russia politician, was angered by the report; Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek slammed the article as twisting and misinterpreting historical facts and made clear such articles were no way forward to good relations.

Defence Minister Martin Stropnický went further by calling the article “outright lies” and expressed regret the article had come during an official state visit by the Czech head of state. President Miloš Zeman will reportedly address the matter while in Russia.

Zvezda responded that the opinions expressed in the article were the author’s own.