Several advisors for President Trump are members of a group born out of the George W. Bush administration, calling themselves Red Dawn. The New York Times just released some mails from these people. This group, nostalgic for the Cold War, is viscerally anti-communist. The USSR ceased to exist, but China is still being ruled by the Communist Party. They are convinced that “evil” Chinese are attacking them with Covid-19. President Trump marginalised them, but their ideas entered the public debate. In the same way that the 9/11 events allowed the adoption of the Patriot Act, which had been prepared in advance, now Covid-19 allows former members of the Bush Administration to reactivate their own crusade.
The decision to remove the monument to Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev in Prague was not made by the Czech leadership, it was a vile decision of people going against the national interests of the Czech Republic. The conclusion to justify the liquidation of the monument was prepared by an American company.
This is part of the recurring disinformation campaign about the statue of Marshall Konev in Prague. It also capitalises on the common pro-Kremlin narrative about the US standing behind all hostile anti-Russian intentions. The democratically elected municipal council of Prague 6 voted for the removal of the statue. Using the protocol of the Politbureau's assembly, Czech historians established that on 8-14 May 1968 Konev chaired the Soviet military delegation sent to Prague to prepare the military invasion of Czechoslovakia. Konev was also chief of the Soviet troops in East Germany during the Berlin wall crisis in 1961. In other words, the Red Army brought not only liberation but also the terror to Czechia, as the mayor of Prague 6, Ondřej Kolář, reminded. Kolář said that he respects the role of Konev-led forces in liberating Prague and the sacrifice of Soviet armies liberating Europe from Nazism. "We will strive for an art competition for a memorial to the liberators of Prague at the end of World War Two instead of the Marshal Konev statue," he said before the vote. "At the same time, we will secure a dignified - and let me stress 'dignified' - placement of this art piece (Konev) in a memorial institution. I think this is a consensual solution we have called for a number of years." The monument to Marshall Konev was erected in 1980 during the "normalisation" period in communist Czechoslovakia. The leadership of Prague's Municipal District 6, which retains legal ownership of the statue, has voted to move the monument to a museum and replace it with a memorial commemorating Soviet sacrifices in the fight against Hitler in general and the liberation of Prague in particular. More information available here. See earlier disinformation cases concerning the Konev's statue which alleged that the purpose of removing the monuments is to provoke aggression towards Russia, that the removal is immoral and illegal, and that Prague committed a crime by removing the Konev monument.