EU-skeptic, Russia-oriented parties make big gains in Czech elections

Russian-oriented parties made big gains in elections held on Oct. 21 by the Czech government for its lower house of parliament. The EU-skeptic ANO party earned 29.7%, followed by another EU-skeptic party ODS that earned 11.3% and the anti-immigrant Freedom and Free Democracy party (10.7%), which has openly called for lifting sanctions against Russia.
 
Zenon Zawada: We’ve been saying ever since last September that anti-immigration, Russian-oriented parties stand to make big gainsin European elections. While that wave reached it trough with the French and German elections earlier this spring, it is rising again with this month’s strong results for the EU-skeptic Austrian People’s Party in the parliamentary vote, as well as the results in Czechia. Likely to become Austria’s next chancellor, People’s Party Head Sebastian Kurz has publicly called for relaxed sanctions against Russia.
 
Meanwhile, the rhetoric for relaxing sanctions against Russia is growing, as we also predicted last summer. Besides the relatively centrist Free Democratic Party of Germany supporting relaxed sanctions, Czech President Milos Zeman offered his own endorsement of appeasing Russia in scandalous comments at PACE this month, in which he proposed giving Russia the Crimean territory in exchange for a cash payment to Ukraine.
 
So the Russian government has the political momentum in its favor with far Right and populist parties drawing increasing support. And with the tide in their favor, we are confident the Russians won’t make any concessions on Crimea or Donbas until 2019 at the earliest, after the Russian elections in 2018. A strong performance by Russian-oriented parties in Ukraine’s 2019 elections will tip Western politicians further in Russia’s favor. We believe EU governing bodies could vote to make the first concessions on sanctions as early as next year.