Adnan Farid has seen his business in the western Czech spa city of Karlovy Vary dwindle from wonderful prosperity in the 1990s to much slower days now. "The Covid pandemic started and then the war came, it has been going down... it barely covers my costs now" he says. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, wealthy Russians who had previously spent holidays in the city started buying up flats, houses and hotels there. Together with a steady flow of tourists from their country, they helped the city blossom as the Czech Republic itself was recovering from four decades of communism under Moscow's control. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES