The officers of the Russian military intelligence GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) perpetrated a 2014 blast of 60 tons of explosives at a military warehouses in Vrbetice (Czech Republic) that left two Czech citizens dead. Thus, according to Article 5 of the Washington Agreement this case is deemed to include an armed attack. Russia must receive the status of a country supporting and sponsoring terrorism.
The attack targeted the weapon that Bulgarian businessman named Emelyan Gebrev planned to buy. Later on he was assassinated, presumably, with the use of Novichok nerve agent. The terrorist attack was prepared and conduct under the personal control of the commander of military unit 29155, General Andrei Averyanov.
The GRU officers Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, suspects in poisoning former head of the GRU personnel department Sergei Skripal in London, were wanted on suspicion of the blast involvement. They arrived in the Czech Republic with passports of Moldovan and Tajik citizens under false names. Thus, Russian intelligence issues plausible passports of these countries to conduct intelligence operations.
Sergei Fedotov (aka Denis Sergeev), previously identified as the third person linked to the chemical poisoning of Skripal, is also among suspects.
• The Czech Republic reacted by expelling 18 Russian diplomats. In its turn, Russia expelled 20 Czechs thereby starting another ‘diplomatic war’ between the EU and Russia. As of now, there is a very high probability that the Czech Republic will expel about 60 more Russians. The concentration of a significant ‘diplomatic contingent’ in the Czech Republic shows the Kremlin’s desire to carry out its destabilizing activities in this country and use it for achieving other goals. It is proved by sizeable diplomatic mission in the Czech Republic in comparison with the UN (according to the website of the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN Moscow has 13 diplomats).
Exposure of Russia’s involvement in the explosions at military warehouses discredits President Zeman stating that the Czech Republic had no direct experience of Russian aggression.
• A significant number of citizens, natives of the USSR, live on the territory of the Czech Republic. This is a typical scheme for Russia’s intelligence services to enlist support of post-Soviet citizens to help conduct special operations and destructive activities both within the Czech Republic and international organizations with the Czech Republic membership, mainly, the EU and NATO.
• The Russian state has a very well-established base in the Czech Republic and Czech intelligence has long been pointing to the fact that the diplomatic mission of the Russian Federation is oversized.
• After expelling 18 Russian embassy personnel security forces continue operations in Prague to neutralize Russia’s influence on the Czech Republic.
• As Czech information resources Respekt and Aktualne.cz informs, hundreds of police officers across the country were involved in exposing and detaining Russian agents, including Czechs affiliated with Russian paramilitaries. According to the Prague Supreme Prosecutor’s Office, police have detained five people suspected of military operations in eastern Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists.
• There is information on detained Czechs’ contacts with some deported Russian diplomats linked to the GRU members.
• Since the start of hostilities in eastern Ukraine (for 7 years), several Czech citizens fighting on the side of pro-Russian militants have been tried in the Czech Republic. At that time this fact was explained exclusively by the strong pro-Russian orientation of the Czech militants who bought Russian disinformation on social networks. As of now, the Russian espionage role in forming the Kremlin’s ideas of convicted Czechs is more than a little obvious.
• The last time, December 2020, the court sentenced a Czech to 15 years in prison for accusing him of taking an active part in the armed conflict in Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian militants in so-called DPR’ since the end of May 2014. This statement was made by a spokesman for the National Center against Organized Crime (NCOZ) who also added that the convict was even decorated by the militants for courage.
• Overall, cases considered by the Czech court involving Czechs’ participation in hostilities on the side of Russian collaborators numbers about two dozen.
• Having strong anti-Western orientation, members of paramilitary groups also helped spread pro-Russian propaganda and related conspiracies.
• Rossotrudnichestvo operating as Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service unit should be also referred to pro-Russian organizations in the Czech Republic.
Read also: Russian intelligence cover structures abroad
• After the Russian information campaign on migration (refugees) and related dangers gradually fell in Czech (European) society, by engaging its Czech agents in paramilitaries Russian propaganda focused on creating the impression of an inevitable armed conflict between the West and Russia, as well as conducting a negative campaign against NATO.
• With the aim to legitimate their activity, paramilitary groups try to organize various public ‘information events’, establish contacts and build cooperation with representatives of municipalities, mainly, to ensure safety on Czech streets.
Particularly, we mean here Českoslovenští vojáci v záloze za mír, an organization that participates in the Crimea annexation legalization (leader is Pplk. Ing. Ivan Kratochvíl), and the Night Wolves, a Putin-close Russian biker club, that is actively used in Russian intelligence operations.
One of the leaders of the paramilitary pro-Russian organization in the Czech Republic is Army general Miroslav Vacek, Minister of National Polio ČSFR. Obviously, he has been cooperating with the GRU since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Just when the Prague local municipality decided to remove the statue of Ivan Konev from the square in the sixth district of Prague in autumn 2019, the Kremlin reacted immediately. Later on Moscow responded by complex and coordinated actions in the form of public demonstrations, disinformation campaigns and attacks on the Czech embassy in Moscow, cyberattacks on computer systems in several Czech hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic, and plans to assassinate the mayor of Prague, where a statue of Marshal Konev was located.
In the context of terrorist acts in the Czech Republic, the proposal of the President of Estonia to ban citizens of the Russian Federation from entering into the territory of the EU and NATO should be taken into account.
