Czech embassy in Moscow emptied
By the evening of April 19, exactly five accredited diplomats should remain at the Czech embassy in Moscow. This was Moscow’s response to the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats from Prague and the allegations that “GRU agents Petrov and Boshirov” carried out a military subversion in the Czech Republic. Why do the Czech accusations look absurd, and what could be the real reasons behind the diplomatic scandal?
It all started with the Prague publication Respect and its “expert on Russian secret services” Ondřej Kundra. It was he who masterminded last year’s “ricin scandal”, which ended in serious trouble for both the Czech security service and the country’s Interior Ministry, into the public sphere. And now it is the article signed by Kundra (and co-authored by Jaroslav Spurny) that was published accusing Russia and specifically the world-famous “suspects in all things” “Petrov” and “Boshirov” of the explosion (organization of the explosion) at a military ammunition depot in the village of Vrbetice in the Zlin region, in the south-east of the Czech Republic closer to the Slovak border. And all this back in 2014, allegedly to prevent the sale of the weapons in the depots to Ukraine via the notorious Bulgarian “death merchant” Gebrev.
The plot of the story presented by the Czechs is as follows. The Czech police claim that certain men resembling Petrov and Boshirov were in Prague in the days preceding the explosion at the Vrbetice military depot and then left for North Moravia (that is, not exactly in the direction of Vrbetice). Allegedly they were in Prague with passports of Moldovan (Nikolai Popa) and Tajik (Ruslan Tabarov) citizens. The only thing that “links” them to the Vrbetice bombing is that it happened on 16 October 2014 at 9.25am, and Popa and Tabarov were checked into a small hotel in North Moravia some 200 kilometres from Vrbetice from 13 to 17 October.
On 17 April, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and rising star Czech politician Jan Gamachek, who now holds two incompatible positions as both foreign and interior ministry heads, announced the expulsion within 48 hours of 18 Russian diplomats “identified as SVR and GRU personnel”. “I am very sorry that Czech-Russian relations will suffer so seriously, but we have to react. We are in the same situation as the UK was in during the Salisbury poisonings,” said Mr Gamachek.
At first, the Czech government declared that it would declassify and make public all data of the investigation into the Vrbetica bombing, but in the middle of the day on April 19 from Prague came the news that Jan Gamachek had retracted his words and would not provide Moscow with data on the investigation. Either he talked to London or Brussels, or it became clear that there was nothing to provide. It is true that in the morning the same garrulous Gamachek tried to explain that “the explosion was not planned on the territory of the Czech Republic”, just that allegedly something went wrong.
Russia responded by expelling not 18 but 20 Czech diplomats from Moscow. The behaviour of the Czech side has become so inadequate that no one is going to pander. Ambassador Vitezslav Pivoňka and his minimal staff will stay in a huge Stalinist building (in the style of “Socialist Realism”) in the centre of Moscow, not far from Tverskaya Street, on Julis Fučika.
There is still the Czech House of Culture and the Czech House (two different structures) nearby on Tverskaya-Yamskaya and the consulates in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, but life for the Czech diplomats in Moscow will never be the same again. And that is if we even forget the history with ricin, which was hushed up only through the convoluted and not very talented explanations of the Czech side.
The most remarkable thing about the current story is that the Czech side, just as in the “ricin scandal”, does not have any physical evidence to prove its allegations. Moreover, they have voluntarily admitted it themselves (in the Ritzin case it took two months for the Czechs to slowly turn back and repent).
Now everyone is fascinated by the consequences of the statements made by the Czech prime minister and the person who holds the posts of the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And we should pay attention to the key phrase in the Czech report: “the police, meanwhile, have no direct evidence that the two men actually physically entered the territory, but they regard such a possibility as a hypothesis with a high degree of reality”. “Hypothesis with a high degree of reality” is a free translation into Czech of the famous highly likely. We have heard this before.
“Petrov” and “Boshirov” have so far only failed to be accused of the assassination of John Kennedy and the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. But the more accusations are heaped on the heads of these two, the more questions are raised about the accusers. Unless in Hollywood movies there could be some pair (groups) of super-agents working together all the time, swooping around Europe for years, blowing up military depots and poisoning defectors and arms dealers. At the same time they have never radically changed their appearance, are recorded in legal databases (this is still questionable) and use passports that would immediately raise additional questions at least with border guards. These are biometric passports, there are fingerprints! These fingerprints remain in the Schengen database once and for all, and it is impossible to enter the Schengen area with different documents with the same fingerprints.
If we assume that the dreaded “GRU agents” really wanted to visit the Czech Republic illegally – what prevented them from entering there using passports of one of the Baltic States? No need to explain Russian in everyday life, Russian accent in other languages (if they know them), but at the same time it gives an uncontrolled opportunity to move around Europe without bowing to every border guard. Even the Mossad uses Irish passports, for example, which infuriates the ancient Celts, but such is the harsh reality. No – the Czech Republic claims passports of Moldovan and Tajik nationals, the very two countries that are known to attract extra attention from local immigration authorities and police. Moldova (and brotherly Romania) are the main suppliers of illegal gypsies to the Schengen zone, and Tajikistan is listed in all the checklists as a potential threat in terms of both terrorism and drug trafficking. How can this be?
Attempts to explain what is happening force one to look at what is happening in Czech power circles. The political situation in that country is traditionally convoluted. Personal relationships, oligarchic wars and extreme bigotry of a Russophobic nature are intricately intertwined with a sincere love of all things Russian.
Not long ago, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Jan Gamáček had been saddled with his opponent as Interior Minister, Tomáš Petříček. Petříček resigned as head of the Czech Foreign Ministry last Monday and has been terribly unhappy about it all week. He is a classic product of a European and American upbringing, a consistent Russophobe, who in addition has always supported any wavering US foreign policy. He is also a close friend of those renegades in the Prague 7 quarter who threatened to tear down the monument to Marshal Konev and put up something in memory of the Vlasovites there. Of late, Foreign Minister Petříček has spoken out strongly against the Russian coronavirus vaccine in opposition to Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.
And so yesterday Petříček, through another Czech newspaper, Dzennik, attacked Jan Gamachek without declaring war, using both “Petrov and Boshirov” and the Sputnik V vaccine as weapons at once. According to him, a fortnight ago, when he, Petrzicek, was still Minister of Foreign Affairs, he allegedly attended a government meeting at which information about the Vrbetica bombing and “Petrov and Boshirov” were discussed. Petřiček accuses his near blood enemy Gamáček of trying, in tandem with Prime Minister Babiš, to silence the whole thing, as Gamáček was about to go to Moscow any day now to negotiate the purchase of a Russian vaccine. “Gamachek is totally incompetent,” claims the pro-European politician born in 1981. Gamachek, by the way, cancelled his trip to Moscow the day before yesterday.
It is only for Russian tourists that Prague is the best foreign picture and a sign that rivals Paris and Venice in terms of romance. Behind this gingerbread facade lies a Byzantine policy, not European. The same Prime Minister Andrej Babiš is regularly plagued by all sorts of scandals, and the coalition government is backed by the word of honour of President Miloš Zeman, who is no longer young and not always healthy. In such an environment a number of specialists have seen the “ricin scandal” as an internal struggle between feuding political and economic clans in the Czech Republic, and the new scandal around “GRU agents” could be put in this context.
On the other hand, the Anglo-Saxons have been successful in playing on such a minefield. In this connection, a version that was cautiously voiced by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova is reasonable. Namely, it may be connected with the arrest of two Belarusian opposition activists in Moscow: Alexander Feduta and Yuri Zenkevich. According to the KGB of Belarus and the FSB of Russia a group led by Feduta and Zenkevich were planning a coup d’etat in Minsk using weapons and even the physical removal of President Lukashenko. And the CIA or other special services of the USA were behind all this.
Alexander Grigorievich himself said that during a recent phone conversation Russian President Vladimir Putin had shared information about the disclosure of this conspiracy with U.S. President Joe Biden. According to the Belarusian leader, Biden only “gurgled” in response.
It would seem that the Czech Republic, with its complicated domestic political situation, has nothing to do with it. According to one version, everything that happened after the disclosure of the coup attempt in Belarus is an operation designed to divert attention from this scandal (and the failure of the US secret services) and divert it to “Petrov and Boshirov” through a very pliable and controllable Czech government because of its internal contradictions.
Indirectly, this was reiterated in the middle of the day by the easy-spoken Jan Gamachek, who called the cancellation of his trip to Moscow about the Sputnik V vaccine a great victory. According to him, Czech security forces have “achieved a phenomenal success”, thanks to which the Czech Republic will be able to “significantly weaken the hostile activities of Russian agents”.
Gamachek noted the “enormity and uniqueness” of the operation “in general and within NATO and the EU”, which made it necessary to be “cautious”.
“That said, my announced trip to Moscow also played a role. For obvious reasons I cannot tell the public all the details”, – he said on Twitter, adding that he was “ready to inform the relevant parliamentary bodies that monitor the activities of the security services”. All this directly contradicts the claims of Tomasz Petrzicek, who insists that it was Hamacek who blocked the investigation in order to go to Moscow for the vaccine. Make up your mind, panovye.
We don’t know how tightly Jan Gamachek cooperates with the Czech Counterintelligence Service (BIS), but President Milos Zeman has a lot of questions for the BIS and its head Michal Kudelka, which have become particularly acute after the infamous “ricin scandal”. Incidentally, the “ricin case” has been officially closed by the Czech prosecutor’s office, but the results of the internal investigation against Colonel Koudelka have never been made public.
Koudelka has three times tried to be promoted to the rank of general, which can only be awarded by decree of the head of state, and three times President Zeman has blocked these promotions. The Czech president is not known for political correctness in his speeches, and sometimes even for common tact. He calls the head of counter-intelligence, Colonel Koudelka, a word that can be roughly translated from Czech as “stupid”. But behind Colonel Koudelka are the Anglo-Saxons, and one can only pity the Czech Republic, because the nominal head of state has no right to remove the head of counter-intelligence, who hates him, and he in return tries to pursue his own political line. It is even hostile to the interests of the Czech Republic itself, if we look at those interests objectively and not from Washington, London or Brussels.