The Czech Republic expels 18 Russian diplomats on suspicion that Russian intelligence services were involved in an ammunition depot explosion in 2014, his government said on Saturday.
The Central European country is a member of NATO and the EU, and expulsions and denunciations have triggered its biggest line with Russia since the end of the communist era in 1989.
His actions could prompt Russia to consider closing the Czech embassy in Moscow, a diplomatic source quoted by Russian news agency Interfax suggested.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said in a briefing that was shown live on television that there were “well-founded suspicions about the involvement of agents of the Russian intelligence service GRU … in the l ‘explosion of an ammunition depot in the Vrbetice area’.
Several explosions shook the Vrbetice reservoir, 330 km (205 miles) southeast of Prague, in October 2014, and killed two employees of a private company that rented the site to a state military organization.
Babis called the circumstances “unprecedented and outrageous,” while a Russian lawmaker quoted by Interfax called his claim absurd.
The U.S. embassy in Prague said on Twitter that Washington “remains with its strong ally, the Czech Republic. We appreciate its important action to impose costs on Russia for its dangerous actions on Czech soil.”
Acting Czech Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said the 18 Russian embassy officials, identified as secret service personnel, would be ordered to leave within 48 hours.
LINK WITH INVASION POISONING?
Hamacek drew a parallel with the poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018 and Czech police said separately that they were looking for two men carrying Russian passports in connection with serious criminal activity on behalf of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
These were the aliases used by two Russian military intelligence officers whom British prosecutors accused of attempting to assassinate Skripal. They and Moscow denied their involvement. Read more
Hamacek said he had “decided to expel all staff from the Russian embassy in Prague that our secret services clearly identified as officers of the Russian secret services, SVR and GRU.”
The Interfax news agency quoted Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy director of the upper house’s international affairs committee, as saying that Prague’s claims were absurd and that Russia’s response should be proportionate.
Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nervous agent in the English city of Salisbury in March 2018.
The attack sparked the largest wave of diplomatic expulsions between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
Czech police said Petrov and Boshirov, whose birth names were given by British government documents such as Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepigas, had also used a Moldovan passport in the name of Nicolai Popa and a Tajik issued in the name of Ruslan Tabarov. .
Police said both men were believed to be in the Czech Republic from October 11-16, 2014, the day of the blast. First they went to Prague and then to the eastern regions, which is where the reservoir is located.
Russia will not extradite them, Interfax said, citing an unnamed source.
“Russia’s main law prohibits the extradition to a foreign state of Russian citizens accused of committing a crime on the territory of a foreign state,” the source said.
Babis said the Czech investigation linked the suspects to a GRU 29155 Russian military intelligence unit.
The New York Times reported in 2019 that 29155 was an elite unit within the Russian intelligence system expert in subversion, sabotage and assassination.
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