Prague accuses Moscow of involvement in 2014 ammunition depot, expels Russian diplomats

Prague will expel 18 Russian embassy employees whom its intelligence services have identified as agents of the Moscow spy service, Jan Hamacek, the Czech foreign minister, announced on Saturday (April 17th). They have 48 hours to leave the Czech Republic.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis explained for his part that his country had “Irrefutable evidence” implicating agents of the unit 29155 of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence, in an explosion of 50 tons of ammunition in a depot, in Vrbetice, in the east of the country, which had killed two people on October 16, 2014. 3 December of the same year, 13 tons of ammunition exploded in an unexplained manner.

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“The explosion caused immense material damage and endangered the lives of many people, but above all it killed two of our compatriots”added Mr. Babis, who said he received this information on Friday, without explaining why the Czech government had obtained it so late.

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These revelations go “Harm Russian-Czech relations”, deplored Mr. Hamacek, who had just taken the place of his pro-European counterpart Thomas Petricek in foreign affairs while keeping his duties as Minister of the Interior.

Mr Petricek was fired on Monday by pro-Russian Czech President Milos Zeman after opposing the use of the Russian vaccine against Covid-19 Sputnik V without the European green light. A pro-European social democrat, Mr Petricek also criticized Russia’s possible participation in a project in the nuclear sector.

“We find ourselves in a situation similar to that of the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the poisoning attempt in Salisbury in 2018”, added Mr. Hamacek in reference to the case of Sergei Skripal, a former double agent who had survived an attack by Russian services on British soil.

In the process, the Czech police released the photos of two men carrying Russian passports, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Bachirov, the two poisoners at Novichok in Salisbury in 2018. Mr. Hamacek said he had summoned Russian ambassador Alexander Zmeevsky this Saturday evening.

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Poland announced Thursday that it had expelled three Russian diplomats accused of“Hostile actions”, after the United States took similar steps as part of a response to a series of acts blamed on Moscow.

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Le Monde with AFP and AP