Thousands of people protested Monday on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution against Czech president Milos Zeman's Russia-friendly foreign policy and a vulgar diatribe that sparked uproar.
The demonstration marked the brutal suppression by communist police of a student march in Prague on November 17, 1989 that sparked the Velvet Revolution, which toppled communism in then Czechoslovakia.
Zeman, a pro-Russian ex-communist, has broken ranks with both the EU and NATO over the crisis in Ukraine.
"I've come to show Zeman the red card because I'm against almost everything he does — his foreign policy, for instance," said Jarmila Rydlova, one of more than 5,000 protesters according to a Czech Television estimate.
While the West believes Russia is pulling the strings in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Zeman has repeatedly described it as "a civil war between two groups of Ukrainian citizens".
He also said during a trip to Beijing last month he wanted to learn how China "stabilises" society.
This month, Zeman angered some voters when he said in a radio interview the centre-left government had "fucked up" a bill and called members of the Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot "bitches", and used a sexual term to describe the band's name.
Zeman sparked more ire last week when he insisted the 1989 student protest crushed by communist police did not cause any "bloodshed" and was just one of "any number of rallies."
"We disagree with our president's behaviour, I hate the things he says," Prague student Vojtech Stros told AFP amid whistles from the crowd, many sporting badges of Velvet Revolution hero Vaclav Havel and carrying banners calling on Zeman to step down.
The November 1989 Velvet Revolution saw Havel, a dissident playwright, installed as the country's first post-war non-communist president a month later.
Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully in 1993. Havel died in 2011.
