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Czech armed forces are expected to take part in manoeuvers in Poland with other NATO armed forces from Central Europe, the Baltic States, and the United States, Polish radio said Friday citing a spokesman from the US embassy in Warsaw. Czech general staff said they were not aware of such an exercise being prepared. NATO aircraft have previously been dispatched to Poland and areas bordering Ukraine as a result of the Russian intervention in Crimea. Russian armed forced took part in exercises near the Polish and Ukraine frontier prior to the use of armed forced to take a grip on the previously autonomous region of |Ukraine.

Fifteen years ago on March 12, the Czech Republic joined NATO, a moment which remains a milestone in the country’s history. Czechs had spent some 40 years under Moscow domination and it was the scrapping of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 – and the joining of NATO in 1999 – that cemented the country’s place in the West.

The Czech Republic on Wednesday marked the 15th anniversary of its membership of NATO. Addressing a conference at Prague Castle, President Miloš Zeman criticized the country's low defence spending, and said the ongoing crisis in Ukraine should speed up the establishment of a joint EU defence force. A special guest at the Prague conference is former NATO Secretary General George Robertson, who led the security alliance during the Czech Republic’s first years as a member. Czech Minister of Defence Martin Stropnický wrote on Wednesday that NATO membership was the main Czech goal after the collapse of communism and was a significant and symbolic sign that the country had been accepted as part of the West. The Czech Republic joined alongside Poland and Hungary at a ceremony in Independence, Missouri.

The chief of the general staff of the Czech Army, General Petr Pavel, was at an airport base in Kabul on Wednesday when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of international troops leaving the base. No casualties were reported among the soldiers in the convey, who belong to NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). No Czech soldiers were injured. General Pavel continued with his visit once the alert at the NATO base was lifted.

A two-day showcase of military planes began on Saturday at the Mošnov airport near the north Moravian city of Ostrava. The joint celebration of Days of NATO and Days of the Czech Air Force features presentations of various aircrafts and presentations by the military, police and rescue units from 16 countries. The Czech and Slovak air force will also commemorate 20 years since the separation of Czechoslovakia and the founding of the two independent nation armies. Last year around 208,000 people visited the Days of NATO celebration, according to the organizers.

Czech President Milos Zeman also met for talks with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The debate covered among others the situation in Syria, Czech participation in military missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan and the Czech defence budget. Mr. Rasmussen praised the Czech Republic’s role in foreign missions and expressed the hope that the Czech government would not lower defence spending.

The air forces of 19 NATO members are set to take part in the annual Ramstein Rover exercise held in the Czech Republic in September, the Czech Army said. This year, the exercise will focus on practising cooperation of tactical aircraft and helicopters with forward air controllers, with a view to fulfilling their tasks in NATO’s ISAF mission in Afghanistan, the army said.

Representatives of the Czech, US, Croatian and Slovak defence ministries signed on Friday a letter of intent on the establishment of an international military aviation training centre, known as MATC. The document was adopted on the sidelines of a meeting of NATO defence ministers meeting in Brussels. The centre will provide training to helicopter pilots from air forces of NATO countries; it is expected that it will operate at several Czech air force bases as well as at those in other NATO member states.

In the next couple of weeks, four Czech soldiers are set to join other troops from Germany, Holland, Slovakia and others in Turkey. The NATO-approved mission aims to help the Turks protect their border with Syria and prevent the civil war in Syria from spilling over.

Over the last two years we have listened to sounds from the Czech Radio archives going back over eighty years. In this, the last of the series, we look at two of the big events of the last decade - the Czech Republic’s accession to NATO and then, five years later, to the European Union. We start with NATO, which the Czech Republic joined in March 1999 along with Hungary and Poland. In 2002 Prague hosted a major NATO summit, at which seven further Eastern and Central European countries were invited to join. At the summit, President Václav Havel gave