Tens of thousands of people attended a pro-Ukrainian rally in Prague on Sunday, filling the Czech capital’s famous Wenceslas Square to the brink.
While protests, vigils and prayer meetings in support of Ukraine are being held across the globe, the event in Prague was particularly poignant given that many of its attendees experienced a Russian invasion first hand.
More background: On Aug. 21, 1968, Soviet-led armies of the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia, crushing the so-called Prague Spring democratic reform movement and restoring the totalitarian communist regime.
Overnight, an estimated 500,000 troops from the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria flooded the country.
At least 137 people were killed during the invasion. Tens of thousands fled the country during the weeks and months after the invasion. Soviet troops stayed in Czechoslovakia for over two decades, with the last leaving in June 1991, a year and half after the Velvet Revolution toppled the Communist regime.
