An aerial view of Russia’s embassy in Prague
Photo: RFE/RL Graphics
Walk down Ukrainian Heroes Street, take a right at Boris Nemtsov Square and you’ll reach the entrance of Prague’s Russian embassy.
Since 2020, Prague has been renaming landmarks around Russia’s sprawling embassy amid increasing tension between Moscow and the West. The street sign trolling has apparently contributed to a diplomatic spat in which Czechia announced it had banned non-accredited Russian diplomats from entering the central European country.
The first site to be renamed alongside Prague’s Russian embassy was a small triangular park once known as Under The Chestnuts Square. The leafy plot was officially renamed Boris Nemtsov Square on February 27, 2020, the 5th anniversary of the murder of the Russian opposition leader.
On the same day, a forest path frequented by joggers and dog walkers along the northern fence of the embassy was named after slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the embassy has been surrounded by adversarial placenames and protest installations. A bridge at the consulate entrance was named after Vitaliy Skakun, a Ukrainian soldier who sacrificed himself to destroy a crucial bridge during the all-out invasion, and a short section of road has been renamed Ukrainian Heroes Street.
A lookout over Prague’s picturesque Stromovka Park was unofficially renamed Aleksei Navalny Lookout in February 2021, but local authorities removed the unauthorized signage, clarifying that Prague streetnames can honor people only after they are deceased.
Following Navalny’s suspicious death inside a Russian prison in February 2024, local Prague authorities applied for the lookout name to be made official.
In Moscow, the Czech embassy has in turn been targeted for protests and vandalism, but Russian police guarding the embassy had generally been swift to respond to attacks. On September 30, 2025 however, questions were raised over the police response to an extensive vandalism attack on the Czech embassy in Moscow after vulgar images and words in Czech were spraypainted at several points on the building.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky called the attack “unacceptable,” and posted on X on September 29 that “every state must ensure the protection of diplomats and the security of representative offices.”
The following day, Lipavsky announced that “at my proposal today the government has banned entry into Czechia for Russian diplomats and holders of service passports who do not have national accreditation from Czechia.” The foreign minister cited unspecified “sabotage operations” as the reason for the move.
On October 2, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters the Kremlin was aware of Lipavsky’s announcement but said that “so far no official notifications have been received from the Czech side. They have not shared any details of this unfriendly action, accordingly, we don’t have them.”
