Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babish announced that he plans to declassify the document on the involvement of the Russian special services in the explosion at the ammunition depot in the village of Vrbetice in the east of the country, which occurred in 2014 at the next meeting of the European Council.
“The government is [отчет чешских спецслужб] will consider, the government will declassify it, and the public can find out about it [подробности]”, Babiš announced at a press conference with reporters on 18 April.
At the same time, TASS writes that the Czech government on April 19 will consider a document on the involvement of Russian special services in the incident in Vrbetica, which was prepared by the Security and Information Service. According to Andrei Babis, it provides evidence of the involvement of agents of the Russian special services in the explosion in Vrbetica.
On April 17, the Czech Republic announced that it was expelling 18 Russian diplomats. The country’s authorities explained their decision by the fact that they were allegedly identified as employees of the Russian special services. However, no evidence of this was presented.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Prague is well aware of what will follow such tricks.
In turn, Dmitry Novikov, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, noted that there are no grounds for expelling diplomats from the Czech Republic. In his opinion, the expulsion of diplomats in the EU countries resembles a “race for loyalty to Washington.”
The situation with Russian diplomats was preceded by new US sanctions against the Russian Federation, the decree on the introduction of which was signed on April 15 by the President of the United States Joe Biden.
On October 16, 2014, 50 tons of ammunition exploded in Vrbetica. Their fragments were scattered within a radius of 800 m from the place where the warehouse building was located. Two employees of the local company Imex Group, which rented a warehouse from the state-owned Military Technical Institute, were killed. All the villagers were evacuated on an urgent basis.