East EU Split on NATO Troops as 1968 Invasion Remembered

By Peter Laca and Radoslav Tomek Jun 5, 2014 9:36 AM ET

The Czech Republic and Slovakia don’t need foreign NATO troops on their soil as sought by other east European nations at a time when the conflict in Ukraine deepens, according to their prime ministers.

Slovakia, which borders Ukraine, rejects any deployment on its territory because of memories of the 1968 Soviet-led invasion that crushed the “Prague Spring” loosening of restrictions on freedom, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said yesterday. The neighboring Czech Republic, Slovakia’s federal partner up to 1993, also doesn’t need external military presence, Premier Bohuslav Sobotka said June 3.

The position of Slovakia and the Czech Republic echoes that of Hungary, where Soviet forces helped crush an anti-Communist uprising in 1956. Their position runs contrary to other former eastern communist states of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia which have asked for more North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces to fortify their defense in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“I can’t imagine that foreign soldiers would be on our territory in the form of some kind of bases,” Fico said. “I can’t imagine that missile-defense systems operated by foreign soldiers would be here.”

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