The Czech Foreign Minister called the monument to Marshal Konev an expression of subservience to Moscow

The monument to Marshal Ivan Konev is not a military burial, and Russia has no legal rights to it. This was stated by the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Jan Lipavsky, in response to a Russian diplomatic note concerning the monument.

The Czech Republic received a diplomatic note from the Russian Embassy in the Czech Republic demanding to indicate the exact location of the statue of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev, which was previously on the mercy of the Inter Brigade, in the Prague-6 area and was dismantled in 2020. According to Russian Ambassador to the Czech Republic Alexander Zmeevsky, "we have not received any official proposals from the Czech side to transfer the dismantled sculpture of the monument to Marshal Ivan Konev," and therefore "recently sent a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic with a request to assist the diplomatic staff of the embassy in determining the exact location and conducting an inspection of the dismantled sculpture to make sure that what is her condition."

In response, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky confirmed that he had received a note from the Russian embassy. According to him, at the moment Prague is not going to transfer the statue of Marshal Konev to Russia, and information about the location of the monument is publicly available and can be found on the Internet.

"Unlike the Russians, who have not responded to the ceasefire proposal for many days, we will respond to their note. This will be an answer based on publicly available information, which the Russian side has undoubtedly found I would have done it in a few minutes on my own," he said.

Lipavsky is sure that the internal affairs of the Czech state, how to dispose of the sculpture of Marshal Konev.

"Russia has no rights to the sculpture. The Czech Bolsheviks installed this decoration of the square in the 6th district of Prague in 1980 as an expression of obsequiousness towards Moscow. And the Czech Democrats decided to remove him in order to point out the dark role of Ivan Konev in the history of the enslavement of European peoples," Lipavsky said.

In turn, Mariana Vernerova, an employee of the public relations department of the Foreign Ministry, said that "we responded to the note and at the same time reminded the Russian side that this monument is not a military burial, is not included in the list of cultural monuments and is not a place of worship." According to her, "Russia has no legal or moral rights to the statue; the property rights belong to the Prague-6 district."

Recall that in April 2020, the administration of Prague-6, headed by the headman of the district Ondrzhey Kolarzh, dismantled the monument, which had previously been repeatedly doused with red paint. Before that, information panels in three languages with facts of the marshal's biography were installed next to the monument, but later it was decided to remove the monument. Currently, the monument has been donated to the Museum of Memory of the twentieth Century.