In response to the Russian annexation of the occupied territories of Ukraine, the Czechs created a petition to announce a referendum on the annexation of Russian Kaliningrad to the Czech Republic. As of October 6, 17,556 people have already signed it.
The author of the petition notes that the city of Kaliningrad, or Královec (in Czech), was founded in honor of King Přemysl Otakar II, so it should go to the "rightful owner" — the Czech Republic.
"As Russia showed us in Crimea and is showing us now in the east of Ukraine, it is quite normal to enter the territory of a foreign state, announce a referendum there and then annex the territory. Thus, we had a unique opportunity to expand the territory of the Czech Republic and finally get access to the sea," the petition reads.
The signatories demand that the Czech government send Czech soldiers to Kaliningrad, call a referendum that ends with a 98% vote in favor of joining the Czech Republic, and then annex Kaliningrad and rename it Královec.
On October 4, a Twitter account and a website appeared in Kaliningrad-Kralovets. This caused a wave of memes.
"Welcome to the official profile of Kralovets 🇨🇿. After a successful referendum, 97.9% of Kaliningrad residents decided to join the Czech Republic and rename Kaliningrad to Kralovets," the post reads.
Czechs and Poles actively joke about this topic. The President of Slovakia, Zuzana Chaputova, also spoke.
Paul Massaro, a senior political adviser to the US Helsinki Commission, also joked about the new Czech city.
And the member of the European Parliament Tomasz Zdehovskyi reposted the joke. "Well, how can you not love the Poles here," he added.
- At the end of August, a court in Belarus recognized as extremist accounts in the social networks of the fictional country Veishnoria. It was invented as a conditional enemy during the joint military exercises of Russia and Belarus in 2017.