The New Year’s speech by the parliamentary speaker, Tomio Okamura (SPD), has sparked a wave of donations to a collection for aid to Ukraine organized by the Gift for Putin initiative, project representative Martin Ondracek told CTK yesterday.
He said a similar effect was seen following the release of a video showing Okamura assisting in the removal of the Ukrainian flag from the Chamber of Deputies building last November, after his election as speaker.
On the first day of January this year, when Okamura published his speech, Ondracek said CZK 780,000 was received in donations, compared to CZK 162,000 on the same day a year earlier. “I would consider CZK 162,000 to be a standard amount for January,” he said. In general, according to Ondracek, January is the worst month for donations, while December is the best. He said that CZK 61 million was raised in December to help Ukraine.
In his speech, Okamura criticised the provision of arms to Ukraine and the leadership of the Ukrainian state. He also opposed Ukraine’s membership in the European Union, criticising the EU’s stance and describing the people around President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as “Ukrainian thieves around the Zelenskiy junta”.
Ondracek said that in addition to the donations to Gift for Putin, he received a number of messages from donors confirming that they had contributed specifically in response to Okamura’s speech, because they did not want to remain silent on the behaviour of the nation’s political representatives.
“Every pressure causes counter-pressure,” he said. “Okamura and these people are provoking counter-pressure by denying Russian involvement in the Vrbetice blast and talking about Ukraine the way they do, and being applauded by their voters on the one hand, while on the other hand, people who disagree are showing their disagreement by using their credit cards. The SPD is thus unwittingly becoming our influencer.”
The effect of the growth in donations in response to the political situation is known, Ondracek said. “We see it a lot abroad and we see it in the Czech Republic as well. The first time we saw it very intensely was when the Chamber of Deputies Speaker assisted by holding a stepladder when the Ukrainian flag was taken down. So it immediately made its way into our collections and now we can see it very well,” he added.
The Gift for Putin refers ironically to the Russian President Vladimir Putin, under whose leadership Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began, and the initiative has organized collections for weapons like anti-tank missiles and drones. It has previously purchased and handed over to the Ukrainian army an RM-70 missile launcher called the Premysl for CZK 50 million, a T-72 tank for CZK 30 million, and a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter, to which the public contributed CZK 72.64 million.
