MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. The Czech parliament’s adoption of a bill, declaring August 21 the Remembrance Day of the Victims of the Invasion and Subsequent Occupation by Warsaw Pact Troops, will hardly be conductive to fruitful cooperation with Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Prague’s determination to once again return to events that took place half of a century ago, with the purpose of including them into the modern political context, the reluctance to flip over this page of history that mars the atmosphere of Russian-Czech relations, will hardly be conductive to successful bilateral cooperation," the ministry said.

Russian diplomats said they learned about the adoption of the bill with "deep regret."

"An approach of this kind on the part of our partners contradicts our bilateral agreements, sealed by the Russian-Czech Treaty on Friendly Relations and Cooperation (August 26, 1993), in which the sides express their desire ‘to ultimately close the books on totalitarian past, related to the unacceptable use of force against Czechoslovakia in 1968 and further unjustified presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia,’" the ministry said.

The country’s Senate passed the bill on December 5. Czech historians believe that during the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Czechoslovakia from August 1968 to mid-1991, a total of 406 Czech citizens died of concomitant incidents. Russian historians say 12 Soviet servicemen were killed in the first month since the deployment of Soviet troops.