Incident: Czech Ministry of Defense trained pilots for Burkina Faso’s pro-Kremlin junta

The Czech state-owned enterprise LOM Praha, wholly owned by the country’s Ministry of Defense, has become embroiled in a major scandal over organizing training courses for military pilots and aviation technicians from the Burkina Faso regime, which openly supports the Kremlin’s policies. Source: Aroundprague

The investigation revealed that in 2024, 25 military technicians from the African country completed a nine-week program at the Flight Training Center in Pardubice, while six pilots completed practical training courses on Z-142C AF aircraft in the autumn of that year. The training was organized with the involvement of Defcon, a private company owned by businessman Petr Markvart, a former agent of the Czechoslovak State Security Service.

The military junta in Burkina Faso, led by Ibrahim Traoré, is a key pro-Kremlin foothold in West Africa, and Traoré himself publicly calls Vladimir Putin his “big brother.”

The Czech Ministry of Defense disclaimed responsibility for the deal, calling it standard commercial activity by a state-owned enterprise that had gone through the licensing process at the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Meanwhile, the theoretical part of the training was conducted by the Faculty of Transportation Engineering at the University of Pardubice, whose lecturers taught aviation subjects.

The scandal deepened when, in July 2026, the Aviation Medical Institute in Prague signed a new open-ended contract with Defcon to train personnel to NATO standards, with no mechanisms in place to vet the trainees.

Earlier, Czech Chief of the General Staff Miroslav Hlaváč stripped Markvart’s company of army backing, stating that its activities directly contradict the country’s national security interests.

Recall that the Burkina Faso junta claimed there had been an attempted “coup.”