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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

It's one of a stockpiles in a small country (out of many) which doesn't even border Ukraine, and the one who had a lot of economic integration going on with Russia. That also predated the axtual war 10 years.

A Russian would say to you that if it's indeed a GRU op, they should do an internal investigation and shoot behind the garden shed the ones who devised / permitted it, after making effort to find out whether they were working for the other side, or just dumb on their own.

Or perhaps the whole GRU is defunct. Many Russians would not reject this idea outright.

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There were not so many large stockpiles of Soviet-era munitions in Western-friendly countries. And despite 2014 being smaller scale than the current conflict I wouldn't say that it's not "actual war". Active Russian soldiers have been confirmed involved, rocket artillery was fired at Ukraine from across the Russian border, territory was annexed.

> A Russian would say to you that if it's indeed a GRU op, they should do an internal investigation and shoot behind the garden shed the ones who devised / permitted it, after making effort to find out whether they were working for the other side, or just dumb on their own.

A naive Russian, I would say. Let's take a simple example:

> In 2009 the Šapošnikovs purchased a sprawling villa on the picturesque Aegean peninsula of Halkidiki, Greece. The price, as recorded in the notarial deed of purchase obtained by The Insider, was 275,292 euros, or $300,000 at the time. Elena would later tell investigators that she had funded the investment “with money from my parents” – a tall order for the septuagenarian couple living in Kyiv on pensions of under $300 per month.

I don't believe that the people who approved such money transfers were small fish in the GRU.

While I have no doubt about the story and these guys being GRU spies...

These numbers are laughtably small. You can't imagine amount of corruption in Russia. Any high-ranking policeman in a mid-sized city will own few villas like that. GRU agent who can smuggle anything and everything might easily have millions of dollars under their pillow.

The war between Russia and Ukraine started in February 2014 when Russia began occupying Crimea.

The ammunition warehouses in Vrbětice exploded in October 2014.

Economic yes, used to be. But the hatred for russians in czech republic is real. Also we don't know what other conflict the ammo was supposed go to. And there is also a possibility of testing preparedness of EU and Nato.

These are gifts brought to the Tzar to show that your Siloviki are more worthy of praise and resources than the other Siloviki.

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