Diplomatic warfare between Russia and the Czech Republic
What is happening between Russia and the Czech Republic. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
Russia and the Czech Republic ordered the mutual expulsion of diplomats over the weekend after authorities in Prague said the Kremlin had set up an explosion that leveled an ammunition depot. The explosion occurred on October 16, 2014, in a remote wooded area near the village of Vlachovice, located 171 miles southeast of the Czech capital, Prague.
The storage depot belonged to the Military Technical Institute of the Czech Ministry of Defense and was managed by a contractor, Imex Group. The blast killed two security guards and forced the evacuation of several communities located nearby. It is assumed that it was the result of an accident, although investigators were unable to determine the cause of the explosion.
On Saturday, Czech authorities announced that the explosion was the work of Unit 29155, a Russian espionage elite whose goal is to subvert Europe's political and economic systems and processes. As already pointed out , Unit 29155 operates under the main direction of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, commonly known as the GRU . Presumably it has existed since at least 2009.
According to Czech investigators, two members of Unit 29155 visited the ammunition depot days before the explosion. They used fake passports from Tajikistan and Moldova and claimed to be members of the National Guard of Tajikistan. Based on their passport photographs, the two men, who used cover names Ruslan Tabarov and Nicolaj Popa, appear to be the same men who tried to kill GRU defector Sergei Skripal in England in 2018.
The reasons why the Russians would have decided to blow up the ammunition depot are unclear. It is speculated that some of the weapons in the depot were intended to be delivered to Ukraine on behalf of the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev. In 2015, Gebrev was hospitalized for several days for signs of poisoning, along with his son and one of his company executives. They eventually recovered fully, but have since claimed to have been targeted by Moscow, because Gebrev's firm sells weapons to Kremlin opponents, including the government of Ukraine.
On Saturday, the Czech government granted 18 Russian diplomats, who it claims are intelligence officers, 48 hours to leave the country. He also said he will provide detailed information on his investigation into the explosion to EU ministers and representatives of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But Moscow called the allegations "baseless and absurd" and condemned the expulsions of its diplomats, describing them as "unprecedented" and "a hostile act" designed "to please the United States".
On Sunday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that 20 Czech Republic diplomats would be expelled from Russia in retaliation for the expulsion of its diplomats by its former Cold War ally.
On the one hand, this episode demonstrates how the alliances between states are changeable and built on equally changing interests but it also eloquently proves the unscrupulousness of the USSR which uses methods widely applied both during the Leninist-Stalinist era (from the Cecka as from the NKVD) and during the Cold War.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/guerriglia-diplomatica-tra-russia-e-repubblica-ceca/ on Mon, 19 Apr 2021 17:42:22 +0000.