Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has rejected calls to reconsider his government’s direction after a crushing Senate election defeat, as the opposition strengthens its position and fresh disputes over Russia, European funding and domestic reforms add to his difficulties.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has ruled out changing his government’s policies despite a humiliating defeat in the Senate elections, in which his ANO movement failed to win a single seat. The result has strengthened the parliamentary opposition and intensified questions over the political direction of his coalition, less than a year after it took office.

Speaking after a cabinet meeting on Monday, 19 October, Babiš insisted that the election results would have no effect on the functioning of his government or its alliance with the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party and the Motorists movement. His administration would continue implementing its programme, including controversial changes to public broadcasting and proposed legislation regulating the financing of non-governmental organisations.

The prime minister’s refusal to reconsider his government’s agenda has drawn criticism from Senate president Miloš Vystrčil, who accused Babiš of transferring responsibility for the defeat to regional party organisations rather than accepting personal accountability.

A defeat with consequences beyond the Senate

The elections, held on 9–10 and 16–17 October, concerned 27 of the Senate’s 81 seats. ANO entered 13 candidates in the second-round contests, but every one of them lost. The party’s representation consequently fell to 14 senators.

Babiš called the outcome “catastrophic”, acknowledging a result that was particularly damaging given ANO’s success in the 2024 Senate elections and its subsequent victory in the October 2025 parliamentary contest.

The opposition Mayors and Independents movement (STAN) emerged as the strongest performer, with ten successful candidates or endorsed contenders. The centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS) secured seven seats, maintaining its position at the head of the Senate’s largest parliamentary group alongside TOP 09.

In an interview published on 20 October, Vystrčil said the results demonstrated that Babiš’s personal electoral appeal did not translate into successful Senate campaigns. He also criticised the prime minister’s response to the defeat, describing his attempts to blame regional organisations as an evasion of leadership responsibility.

The vote followed municipal elections in which ANO lost ground in several important urban centres, while SPD also suffered substantial losses.

Opposition leadership becomes the next political contest

STAN leader Vít Rakušan has interpreted the result as evidence that his movement can become ANO’s principal national challenger.

The party’s Senate performance followed a strong showing in municipal elections, including victory in Prague, where its leading candidate Petr Hlaváček is seeking to form the next city administration.

The movement’s growing appeal is supported by recent opinion polling. A Median electoral model published on 17 October, based on September interviews, placed ANO at 29.5 per cent, STAN at 17 per cent and ODS at 12.5 per cent.

Yet STAN’s ambitions face competition from within the opposition. ODS retains substantial institutional influence through the Senate, while the Christian Democrats’ new leader, Jan Grolich, is increasingly discussed as another possible contender for national opposition leadership.

The opposition’s unity is also less straightforward at municipal level. In Ostrava, ANO has negotiated a local governing agreement with Starostové pro Ostravu and the Ostravak movement, illustrating the flexibility of local political alliances.

Russia policy brings fresh controversy

The electoral setback coincides with renewed controversy over the Czech government’s approach to Russia.

On 19 October, Foreign Minister Petr Macinka, leader of the Motorists, defended his decision not to support a Finnish initiative calling for tighter European Union restrictions on entry visas for Russian citizens.

The proposal, promoted by Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, sought stronger EU-wide restrictions on non-essential travel by Russian nationals, including tourists, against a background of growing concerns over Russian sabotage and hybrid operations.

According to details of the diplomatic disagreement, senior Czech foreign ministry officials had recommended supporting the initiative.

Macinka argued that Prague already maintained extensive national restrictions and had previously endorsed a comparable Estonian proposal. He questioned the effectiveness of the Finnish initiative, which attracted limited support from other EU governments.

The disagreement comes as Czech security policy remains under scrutiny. On Tuesday, 20 October, the National Security Council discussed the country’s security outlook, military development plans and changes to NATO’s air and missile defence implementation arrangements.

The issue exposes a continuing area of contention between Babiš’s coalition and opposition parties favouring closer coordination with Ukraine’s European supporters.

Brussels presents another challenge

Meanwhile, Babiš faces unresolved questions concerning his former business conglomerate Agrofert and access to European Union funding.

The European Commission has maintained restrictions on certain EU reimbursements after concluding that the trust arrangement involving Babiš’s business interests does not sufficiently address the potential conflict of interest.

The measures affect particular cohesion-fund expenditure and rural development reimbursements, rather than all EU agricultural payments. Babiš has maintained that the arrangements governing his business interests comply with the law.

The dispute carries particular significance as Prague participates in negotiations over the EU’s next long-term budget, covering 2028–2034.

At the European Council summit on 15–16 October, Babiš argued for protecting national allocations of EU funds, revisiting aspects of the emissions trading system and addressing high industrial energy costs. These negotiations will continue while the Commission’s concerns about his business arrangements remain unresolved.

Government retains power despite opposition gains

The Senate defeat does not threaten Babiš’s parliamentary majority. The lower chamber can override most Senate objections to ordinary legislation, and the governing parties continue to command sufficient support to pursue their programme.

The September Median model projected that ANO, SPD and the Motorists would retain 107 seats in the 200-member Chamber of Deputies, only slightly below their current combined strength.

Nevertheless, the elections have given the opposition a stronger platform for challenging the government over public broadcasting, European relations, defence policy and constitutional legislation, where the Senate possesses more substantial powers.

The immediate political contest is therefore not over the survival of Babiš’s government, but over whether STAN can convert its regional and Senate successes into a credible national alternative before the next parliamentary elections. For Babiš, whose party remains the largest in the country, the more pressing difficulty is its inability to defeat opposition candidates when elections are decided beyond ANO’s established electoral base.

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Baku - "The European Parliament consists of these Islamophobes, and this must always remain in focus," Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on 15 September, accusing the West of waging an "undeclared war" against Islam.

Yet just days later, the Azerbaijani government stepped up its enforcement of restrictions on Islamic headscarves in schools, triggering social media campaigns and protests both inside the country and abroad.

This is not the first time Azerbaijan has attempted to ban the hijab in schools. WikiLeaks cables revealed that, as early as 2007, Ramiz Mehdiyev, then head of the Presidential Administration, had expressed concern over the growing number of women wearing headscarves.

He reportedly outlined the government’s intention to introduce school uniforms prohibiting the hijab as a preventive measure, warning that the trend would otherwise become impossible to stop.

In November 2010, the Education Ministry’s decision to prohibit the hijab in schools sparked mass protests in Baku, Ganja, and other cities. As a result, in the years that followed, restrictions were enforced inconsistently, leaving the issue in a legal and administrative grey zone.

The 21 September measure, however, signals a renewed determination to enforce the ban. Although it does not explicitly prohibit the hijab, the authorities rely on school uniform regulations and the principle of secular education to justify restrictions on religious headwear.

Unlike in 2010, the latest enforcement also affects teachers. Videos showing distressed students in tears and parents protesting outside schools have circulated on social media.

Hundreds of people have reportedly been detained amid the wider crackdown.

There have also been reports of women in other public-sector workplaces being pressured to remove their headscarves, suggesting that the issue may extend beyond the education system.

Azerbaijan’s religious landscape is already subject to extensive state control. Since the early 2000s, the country’s religious policy has shifted towards increasingly restrictive regulation.

Successive legislative amendments have narrowed the space for religious freedom, including through restrictions on public religious gatherings and foreign-trained religious preachers, mosque closures, and state control over the appointment of mosque imams.

The Shia Muslim community, which constitutes the majority of the country’s Muslim population, has faced particular scrutiny. A list of 322 political prisoners published by Azerbaijani rights monitors on 5 October included 178 religious believers, making them the largest category on the list.

By presenting the hijab as a “Persian-Arab value” alien to Azerbaijani national identity, the authorities portray restrictions on religious expression as a defence of national identity and sovereignty.

Pro-government media and commentators have framed the controversy as a national security issue, linking visible Islamic dress to alleged Iranian influence and associating the protests with Tehran.

Importantly, this framing also reinforces Baku’s preferred international image as a secular state and a reliable partner for Western governments.

The rift with Turkey

The controversy opened an unusual fault line between Azerbaijan and Turkey. Turkish social media had already been awash with criticism over Baku’s decision to keep its representative in the UN General Assembly hall during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in September.

The Turkish delegation joined representatives of numerous other countries in walking out during the address, amid widespread condemnation of genocide in Gaza.

Azerbaijan’s subsequent hijab restrictions further intensified this criticism, bringing renewed attention to the tension between Baku’s invocation of Muslim solidarity, its domestic religious policies, and its relationship with Israel.

Protestors staged demonstrations outside Azerbaijan’s embassy and consulate in Turkey.

In an address to a convention of his ruling New Azerbaijan Party (NAP) in Baku on 2 October, Aliyev criticised unnamed actors for interfering in Azerbaijan's domestic affairs.

“Everyone should know their place; they should not interfere in our affairs, stick their noses into our way of life, or tell us what to do. Everyone should mind their own nation and state,” he said.

Although Aliyev did not explicitly name Turkey, his remarks were widely interpreted as a rebuke to Turkish critics. This was particularly notable because, at the time, no Turkish government official had publicly commented on the headscarf restrictions in Azerbaijan.

That changed when Oktay Saral, a chief adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, described the exclusion of hijab-wearing students from schools as “unacceptable” and expressed hope that Azerbaijan would “correct this mistake” soon.

Leyla Şahin Usta, deputy parliamentary group chair of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), also criticised the restrictions. Sharing a video of the controversy on X, she wrote: “We hope Azerbaijan will reverse this mistake as soon as possible. These distressing images are unbecoming of the modern world.”

The issue is particularly sensitive for the AKP, whose rise was partly shaped by opposition to restrictions on Islamic dress following Turkey’s 28 February 1997 military-led intervention, known as the “postmodern coup."

Yet the criticism was not confined to the ruling party. Politicians from across Turkey’s political spectrum also spoke out against the restrictions, suggesting that the controversy had become a broader public issue rather than an exclusively partisan dispute.

Baku, nonetheless, views the criticism from Turkey as a campaign backed by Ankara.

After Saral’s X post, in a statement, the NAP accused Ankara of fomenting “artificial tensions” between the two countries. It also alleged that Turkish media outlets close to the AKP government were publishing reports about Baku that were “contrary to the facts” and warned that the controversy could damage bilateral relations.

The statement went further, rejecting what it called attempts to distort Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel and the accusations directed at Baku over those ties. It defended the relationship as one based on international law and mutual interests.

The response suggests that Baku views the controversy not simply as criticism of its domestic religious policies but also as a challenge to its right to pursue an independent foreign policy.

What's next?

Despite the increasingly sharp rhetoric, a major deterioration in Azerbaijani-Turkish relations remains unlikely.

The two countries maintain deep strategic, military, and economic ties, giving both governments strong incentives to contain disagreements rather than allow them to escalate.

Although Turkish officials did not directly escalate the dispute with public counter-accusations, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan addressed the tensions during his 15 October visit to Baku. He emphasised the countries’ shared history and their ability to manage differences without undermining their strategic relationship.

“There is no need for these issues to be turned into a propaganda tool through social media,” he said.

Yet the recurring controversies expose tensions beneath the familiar rhetoric of the “one nation, two states” alliance. This is particularly significant as tensions between Turkey and Israel continue to grow.

From Israel’s perspective, such disputes create a potential strategic advantage, as they expose the limits of Azerbaijani-Turkish solidarity. Baku’s decision to bring Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the CICA summit aboard a scheduled Azerbaijan Airlines passenger flight is particularly telling.

The aircraft crossed Turkish airspace despite Ankara’s restrictions on Israeli government aircraft.

The arrangement underscored the contrast between Turkey’s efforts to isolate Israel and Azerbaijan’s continued willingness to facilitate high-level Israeli engagement.

It may reinforce suspicions in Turkey that Baku’s strategic partnership with Israel places limits on the solidarity Ankara can expect from its closest regional ally.

Rovshan Mammadli is a Baku-based journalist and independent analyst. Holding a BA in Israel and Middle East Studies and an MA in International Policy Studies, he focuses on Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, Middle East politics, and peace and security in the South Caucasus. 

Follow him on X: @MammadliRovshan

Edited by Charlie Hoyle

Zelenskyy’s urgent discussion with the US Secretary of State suggests that Washington cannot pursue accommodation with Moscow without confronting opposition in Congress, the requirements of American national security and Ukraine’s continuing dependence on US military support.

The telephone conversation between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday, 20 October, has exposed an increasingly uncomfortable contradiction in American policy towards Russia. While President Donald Trump is easing economic pressure on Moscow and attempting to restrain Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, senior members of his administration are having to address the consequences for Ukraine’s defence.

Zelenskyy raised three immediate concerns: the availability of Patriot interceptor missiles, interruptions to American early-warning intelligence concerning Russian ballistic attacks, and restrictions affecting Starlink and Starshield satellite communications. He described the discussion as constructive, expressing appreciation for Rubio’s willingness to help.

The significance lies less in the diplomatic language than in the circumstances surrounding the call. Washington is attempting to obtain concessions from Moscow while several of its own decisions have weakened confidence in the security arrangements on which Kyiv depends. Rubio’s involvement suggests that these difficulties cannot simply be left unresolved while Trump’s envoys pursue another round of negotiations.

The political cost of concessions to Moscow

Trump’s recent decisions concerning Russian energy exports have brought an existing disagreement over Ukraine into American domestic politics.

The administration has facilitated Russian diesel exports and waived new sanctions under the Graham Act, legislation intended to increase pressure on Russia and its principal energy customers. Rubio has said the president will use a 60-day period to assess the economic consequences of implementing the measures.

For Trump, the immediate attraction is apparent. Rising fuel prices have become a political liability ahead of the 3 November congressional midterm elections. Increasing supplies on international markets offers the administration a potential means of relieving pressure on American consumers.

The difficulty is that concessions to Vladimir Putin carry their own electoral consequences. Moscow remains deeply unpopular among substantial sections of the American political establishment, including Republicans who regard support for Ukraine as a matter of American strategic interest.

That opposition is no longer confined to public criticism. Republican senators have joined Democrats in challenging decisions affecting Ukraine’s military capabilities, creating an additional problem for an administration already facing a difficult electoral environment.

Trump can justify Russian energy concessions as an attempt to protect American consumers. Explaining why Ukraine should simultaneously experience interruptions to critical defence systems is considerably more difficult.

Rubio and the machinery of American foreign policy

Rubio’s position within the administration is particularly important. As both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, he occupies two offices central to the formulation and execution of American foreign policy.

His conversation with Zelenskyy took place during a diplomatic tour of Uzbekistan and India, demonstrating that the deterioration in relations with Kyiv required attention even while the administration was pursuing other international priorities.

It would be premature to interpret Rubio’s intervention as evidence of an independent foreign policy. There is no indication that he is acting against Trump’s instructions. The more plausible interpretation is that the administration recognises a need to contain the consequences of its recent decisions without requiring the president publicly to reverse his position.

The controversy surrounding Starshield is particularly revealing. Reuters reported that instructions to restrict the satellite service used by Ukrainian forces originated inside the White House. The officials cited did not identify who authorised the order, while the administration has denied Trump’s personal involvement.

Separately, Zelenskyy has reported failures to receive advance warnings of Russian ballistic attacks. The cause of those interruptions remains disputed.

These developments have already attracted congressional scrutiny. Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen led a bipartisan request for an investigation, warning that failures in communications and intelligence-sharing may have endangered American personnel in Ukraine.

Congress cannot directly manage the administration’s foreign policy. Nevertheless, its powers over expenditure, legislation and oversight make sustained opposition politically consequential, particularly when members of the president’s own party are involved.

Ukraine needs military assistance, not diplomatic promises

The immediate requirements in Kyiv are considerably more specific than the objectives being discussed in Washington’s diplomatic negotiations.

Ukraine needs reliable satellite communications, uninterrupted intelligence concerning incoming missiles and sufficient Patriot interceptors to defend its cities and critical infrastructure. Delays in any of these areas have consequences that cannot be addressed through declarations about a future peace settlement.

The shortage of Patriot missiles is particularly serious. Zelenskyy has complained that American authorisation is delaying deliveries under arrangements financed by European governments. Washington’s commitments elsewhere, including the Middle East, add further pressure to American air-defence inventories.

Meanwhile, preparations for new negotiations in Oslo involving American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner continue. The involvement of European leaders may broaden the diplomatic discussion, but it does not resolve the central obstacle: Putin has offered no convincing indication that he is prepared to end the invasion on terms acceptable to Ukraine.

Proposals concerning Ukrainian elections, NATO membership or alternative negotiating arrangements remain subordinate to that problem. Without a ceasefire that can be enforced, even an agreement on the political framework for peace would leave fundamental questions of security unanswered.

The limits of presidential power

Trump retains substantial authority over American sanctions, military assistance and diplomatic engagement. Yet his ability to offer Moscow meaningful concessions is constrained by several factors beyond his immediate control.

Congress can challenge further attempts to weaken sanctions or restrict assistance. European governments maintain their own sanctions regimes and are not obliged to follow Washington’s approach. Ukraine retains considerable military capacity, including the ability to attack Russian energy facilities that contribute to financing the war.

Nor can the American president compel Putin to accept a settlement. If Russia calculates that continuing military operations offers greater advantages than negotiations, additional concessions from Washington may encourage Moscow to prolong the conflict rather than end it.

Rubio’s conversation with Zelenskyy therefore suggests that the administration is being forced to confront the practical consequences of its policy. An American president may seek improved relations with Moscow, but the institutional interests of the United States do not necessarily change with his personal diplomatic priorities.

For Kyiv, the question is whether those interests will translate into the continued supply of weapons, intelligence and communications support. Russia’s attacks will continue irrespective of the timetable established for American diplomatic initiatives.