The Czech government on Saturday said it would expel 18 Russian diplomats identified by local intelligence as secret agents of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and GRU military intelligence agency who are suspected of involvement in a 2014 explosion.
Czech police later said that they are seeking two Russians in connection with the blast, which killed two people, with passports used by the suspects in the attempted poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in 2018.
“Eighteen employees of the Russian embassy must leave our republic within 48 hours,” Acting Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Hamacek told reporters.
Photo: AFP
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said authorities had “clear evidence” linking GRU officers from unit 29155 to the blast in a military ammunition warehouse near the eastern Czech village of Vrbetice.
He added that he had received the information on Friday, without explaining why the investigation had taken so long.
“The explosion led to huge material damage and posed a serious threat to the lives of many local people, but above all it killed two citizens,” Babis said.
The blast occurred on Oct. 16, 2014, at a warehouse with 58 tonnes of ammunition. It was followed months later by another big blast at a nearby warehouse with 98 tonnes of ammunition.
The Czech organized crime squad (NCOZ) said that it was looking for two men using Russian passports in relation to the explosions.
The passports bear the names of Alexander Petrov, born in 1979, and Ruslan Boshirov, born in 1978, and their holders are also wanted in the UK in connection with Skripal’s poisoning in Salisbury.
Russia denied involvement in the poisoning, but about 300 diplomats were sent home in subsequent tit-for-tat expulsions.
“The two men were present on Czech territory in ... October 2014” when the Vrbetice blast occurred, the NCOZ said, adding that the two men also used Tajik and Moldovan identities.
Babis said the expulsion of 18 diplomats had the full support of Czech President Milos Zeman, who has fostered close ties with both Moscow and Beijing.
Zeman has repeatedly spoken out against his country’s Security Information Service (BIS), which has accused Russian intelligence services of orchestrating recent cyberattacks on the Czech foreign ministry and other targets.
In a report last year, the BIS said that Russian secret services also pushed their interests in the Czech Republic through spies with diplomatic cover.
“Workers and collaborators of all Russian intelligence services — the civilian service SVR, the military service GRU, the internal security service FSB and the Federal Protective Service — were present and active on Czech territory in 2019,” the BIS said.
Hamacek said earlier this week that he would travel to Moscow on Monday to negotiate potential supplies of the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine, but he has canceled the trip over the diplomatic spat.
Hamacek, who is also Czech minister of the interior, said he was sorry the incident would “fundamentally damage Czech-Russian relations.”
He said he had summoned Russian ambassador Alexander Zmeyevsky to convey the decision.
“We are in a situation similar to that in Britain following the attempted poisoning in Salisbury,” he added.
On Thursday, Czech neighbor Poland said it had expelled three Russian diplomats for “carrying out activities to the detriment” of Poland.
Warsaw also expressed solidarity with the US, which earlier that day had announced sanctions and the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats in retaliation for what Washington said was the Kremlin’s US election interference, a massive cyberattack and other hostile activity.
Italy is another country to have sent Russian envoys packing earlier this month after a navy captain was caught handing over classified documents to a Russian agent.
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