Jan Šinágl angažovaný občan, nezávislý publicista

The signing of a partnership agreement between the Russian Federation and North Korea and the deepening of military cooperation between these authoritarian countries should be the final push for the US Congress to recognize Putin's Russia as a state sponsor of global terrorism. Two US Senators, both Democrat and Republican, have stated this.

"The signed agreement between Putin and Kim Jong-un is deeply frightening and hostile not only to the United States, but to peace, freedom, and justice around the world. Two of the world's most autocratic leaders who commit atrocities stand together and sponsor terrorism... Russia deserves to be in this small, selective club of murderers who commit atrocities,"Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said, according to Voice of America.

They explicitly mentioned, for example, the poisoning of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in 2004, the poisoning of former Russian FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 350 in the Donetsk region in 2014, support for the aerial bombing of Aleppo, Syria in 2016, the poisoning of former Russian military officer and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018, and the suspicious death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

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Let us not forget Anna Politkovskaya, Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, Irina Slavina and many other brave Russians who have refused to remain silent. JŠ

Full Article in Czech>

Knowing the opera's synopsis, we know it was written about a tsar who had absolute power. It's a story about absolute power and how illusory it is. To gain power, the Tsar needs to kill. And he has to kill to keep power. The price the Tsar pays for that is his own death.

... This is the fate of anyone who tries to seize power this way. So it's a story about how power is illusory and what price is paid by those who seize it.

... In Russia we see a regime because there is no democracy. There are artists who have built their careers on the fact that they have supported the regime, worked for the regime, promoted the regime, defended the regime, and have been given so many medals for it that they can't fit on their chests, so much money that they can't spend it. They can use it to buy an island and a palace in Venice.

... It's similar to the Mafia - everyone works for the godfather and the godfather hands out rewards. 

... How can we not understand Ukrainians fighting for their survival when someone tells them that they have no right to exist, or even that they do not exist? No one has the right to tell a country, a nation, that it has no right to exist. By the way, the Russians are very angry that the Ukrainians recognise a foreign language, Russian, on their territory and so it is right.