Protest held in Prague against inflation, military support for Ukraine

PRAGUE -- Thousands of people protested against high living costs and the government's military support for Ukraine in the Czech capital Prague on Saturday.

Under the banner "Czechia Against Poverty", the protest was organized by the Pravo Respekt Odbornost (PRO) party.

In addition, demonstrators demanded to halt arms deliveries to Kyiv and put forward a proposal to hold a peace conference in Prague. Some held banners explicitly against the country's membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Though the year-on-year inflation in the Czech Republic fell to 16.7 percent in February from 17.5 percent in January, this was still well above the tolerance threshold of 3 percent set by the Czech National Bank.

An analysis performed by PAQ Research and published by Czech Radio in December 2022, predicted that up to 30 percent of households in the Czech Republic could fall into poverty on the back of rising energy and housing costs this year.