Czech Republic:
A day after the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats, Russia retaliated by announcing it would send back 20 Czech diplomats, exacerbating relations that have already been strained in recent times.
- Prague had accused Russian embassy officials of being intelligence operatives and said that it suspected them of being involved in a 2014 explosion at an arms depot that left two dead.
- The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe.
- It is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the east.
- Its capital is Prague.
Czech Republic:
- In the 19th century, the Czech lands became more industrialized, and in 1918 most of it became part of the First Czechoslovak Republic following the collapse of Austria-Hungary after World War I.
- After the Munich Agreement in 1938, Nazi Germany systematically took control over the Czech lands.
- Czechoslovakia was restored in 1945 and became an Eastern Bloc communist state following a coup d’état in 1948.
- In November 1989, the Velvet Revolution ended Communist rule in the country, and on 1 January 1993 Czechoslovakia dissolved with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
