Final Word from Tuesday, September 9, 2025

The Czech army is No. 53 this year in the Global Firepower index of 145 countries, down from No. 46 last year. The index takes into account more than 60 factors to determine the military strength of a given country. Kazakhstan, at No. 57, might have twice the population of the CR and 10 times more military personnel, but the CR has triple the defense budget and comparable overall military firepower. In the Czech information war, emphasis is often put on quantity, without taking into account overall firepower. Voxpot found in a review of what it called "disinformation webs" that tens of thousands of translations of articles from sanctioned Russian websites are flooding into the Czech Republic. Anti-systemic Czech political parties are making massive use of Russian disinformation for political mobilization, Voxpot said. But it provided no real indication of what the disinformation firepower of the Kremlin actually is. Surely the countervailing anti-disinformation firepower of Czech TV, Czech Radio and ČTK is at least 10 times greater. If there's a problem with Czech democracy, it's more likely on the side of the democratic forces. [ Czech Republic Television news agency Russia ]