Czech President Milos Zeman will receive on Monday evening, April 26, Prime Minister Andrei Babis, to discuss relations between Prague and Moscow, as well as a number of other issues.
“On Monday, at 18:00 (19:00 Moscow time – Ed.), The next meeting of the President of the Republic Milos Zeman and Prime Minister Andrei Babis will take place in the Lany country residence,” the CTK news agency reported on Sunday, April 25.
It is assumed that in addition to bilateral relations with Russia, the parties will discuss the epidemiological situation in the Czech Republic and the efforts of the parliamentary opposition, which is seeking to postpone elections to the lower house of parliament. The elections are scheduled for October 8 and 9 this year.
On April 17, Babiš announced that the Czech authorities suspect Russian special services of involvement in the explosion at an ammunition depot in Vrbetica in 2014. On the same day, Prague announced its decision to expel 18 Russian diplomats.
Russia, in response to these actions, a day later announced 20 employees of the Czech embassy in Moscow persona non grata. The accusations in the Russian Federation were categorically denied, and the fact that Prague does not publish a report on the explosion, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called evidence of a lie.
As explained in the Russian Foreign Ministry, as a result of the mutual expulsions of diplomats, by May 31, seven diplomats, 25 technical staff and 19 people received on the spot will remain in the embassies of the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation.
On April 25, Zeman said that he approved the proposal of the Cabinet of Ministers to expel Russian diplomats, since he “does not like intelligence officers.”
In addition, the President of the Czech Republic did not rule out the possibility that the situation around the story with the explosions in the warehouses in Vrbetica is a game of the special services. He stressed that in the intelligence report there is no evidence of the involvement of “Russian agents” in this incident.
Zeman urged to wait for the results of the investigation of the incident before drawing conclusions.
Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov noted on the same day that Zeman did not present evidence of the involvement of the Russian special services in the explosion in Vrbetica, because they simply did not exist and do not exist.
In Germany, they also pointed out inconsistencies in the version of the Czech Republic about the explosions in warehouses in Vrbetica in 2014.