A day after the Czech government blamed Russian military intelligence agencies for a series of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian government announced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats would be expelled in response.
The expulsions indicate a further escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and Western governments, reaching an unprecedented intensity since the Cold War. The Czech-Russian spit comes just days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian government officials and businesses in response to widespread piracy of the US government’s computer systems.
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called the Czech accusations “absurd” and accused the government of being an American puppet.
“In an effort to thank the United States for the recent US sanctions against Russia, the Czech government in this case has even surpassed its overseas masters,” the statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The expulsions will most likely decimate the Czech diplomatic presence in Russia, where the Czechs retain only a few dozen diplomats.
In contrast, the Russian Embassy in Prague, the Czech capital, is considered one of the largest in the country in Europe and is used, say security experts, as an area for organizing intelligence operations in several Western countries.
The explosions in 2014, first in the village of Vlachovice and then, two months later, at a nearby ammunition depot, were never fully explained, although at the time authorities raised the possibility of sabotage. Two workers at the government warehouse were killed.
The blasts came at a time when Ukrainian forces were desperate for weapons to return the gains made by Russian-backed separatists, as well as when Russian forces were deepening their involvement in the Syrian civil war.
On Saturday, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis announced that a subsection of the Russian military intelligence agency, known as Unit 29155, was responsible for the explosions.
The unit, which has been in operation for more than a decade, has been linked to a series of violent actions in Europe, including an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom. . two years later.
The British government has charged two officers in Unit 29155 with poisoning.
On Saturday, Czech authorities said the two agents, known by their pseudonyms Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, were in the Czech Republic in the days leading up to and including the first explosion in October 2014. In a statement, the Organized Crime Unit The Czech national police said the two men were wanted in connection with an unspecified “serious crime”.