Czechs respond to anti-Ukrainian actions and statements by increasing donations

Petr Drbohlav, regional director for Eastern partnership and Balkans and head of the aid department at the Czech humanitarian organization Clovek v tisni (People in Need), said this in a comment to Ukrinform.

"Every time certain politicians make controversial statements, people react by sending even more money to NGOs. We saw this, for example, last year after certain actions by U.S. President Donald Trump: whenever he posted something, donations increased. After his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, organizations recorded a significant rise in donations. We also saw a noticeable increase in December and January, which I associate with some statements by Czech politicians from the current governing coalition. And of course, when people see in the media what is happening – when Kyiv is freezing – they send money," Drbohlav said.

He noted that his organization alone has directed approximately 7 billion Czech crowns (about $270 million) in various types of assistance to people in Ukraine over the past four years. About a third of that amount came from individual and corporate donations, mostly from the Czech Republic (another third came from the EU and the remaining third from governments and the UN).

Recently, it was reported that Czech NGOs spent more than 8.9 billion Czech crowns on Ukraine last year and raised about 3.4 billion crowns through public donations. Drbohlav admitted that these figures give him "a huge sense of despair."

"If there had been no Russian aggression, we would not have had to collect so much money just to repair damaged infrastructure. We could have modernized it properly instead of constantly carrying out quick repairs. For me, this is an enormous waste of money and energy – all because of the whim of one person in the Kremlin," Drbohlav said.

As reported earlier, the volunteer organization Darek pro Putina (A Gift for Putin) has raised more than 5 million Czech crowns for bionic prosthetic arms for Ukrainian veteran Artem, who lost both arms but survived thanks to tourniquets that had also been delivered to the front by Czech volunteers.