Czech PM claims Russia played major role in 2014 ammunition warehouse explosion | Hacker News Reader

Czech PM claims Russia played major role in 2014 ammunition warehouse explosion

english.radio.cz

68 pointsmvolfik21 comments

Interesting: "The Czech police on Saturday evening released images of two men wanted for serious offences. The two are Anatoly Chepig and Alexander Mishkin, the same Russian GRU agents believed to have carried out a failed assassination attempt using the poison Novichok in Salisbury in the UK in 2018."

The KGB seems like a very efficient operation.

The KGB was dissolved in 1991 and later succeeded by the SVR (foreign intelligence) and FSB (federal security).

The GRU is the military intelligence agency.

The KGB changed its name. The staff and methods did not change.

From what I read on this it is surprising to me that the Russian involvement has not been uncovered earlier.

The two operatives were official visitors to the warehouse at around the time of the incident. Scans of their fake passports have been on file ever since. It seems they could have easily been recognized as GRU operatives at the latest when their faces became public knowledge in 2018.

Some interesting things for context:

- Russian embassy in Prague is one of the biggest embassies in CZ

- our president is strongly leaning to Russia, lobbying for Sputnik V vaccine even though it's not approved, and verbally dismisses sanctions against Russia

- all of this is happening during preparations of Dukovany nuclear power plant expansion, where Russian Rosatom still wasn't dismissed despite clear security risks

> our president is strongly leaning to Russia, lobbying for Sputnik V vaccine even though it's not approved, and verbally dismisses sanctions against Russia

Yet Zeman agreed with Babiš on the decision of the secret services finding which led to the expulsion of Russian diplomats.

I'm curious about the Dukovany NPP part here - I haven't seen any news services in Poland reporting on this in context of the expulsion.

Rosatom has been excluded from the selection process since.

What is Russia's motive purported to be?

Czech munitions were/are compatible with the Soviet era weapon systems used by Ukraine. At the time Ukraine was buying whatever was left at former Warsaw Pact countries. Russia's motive was to deny Ukraine this possibility.

It could be not necessary Russia's motive. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/czech-minister-says-russia-ro... Imagine if a - let's say Westinghouse Electric Corporation - wants a juicy government contract and wants to kick China General Nuclear and Rosatom out of competition. How would you do that? One way to do it - dig out 7 year old skeleton and drag it through the streets of the town with the mask of Putin.

Cheap and effective, ~7 billion $ is at stake.

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