DISINFO: Foreign secret services fabricated Russian involvement in Vrbětice explosion
SUMMARY
Czech politicians receive their orders from foreign secret services. The revelation that Russia was involved in the explosion in Vrbětice in 2014 will go down in history as the great lie about Vrbětice. The fact that the Czech authorities are pursuing a single line of investigation implies that there is no actual investigation. Instead of investigating, they immediately ruled out bilateral talks with Russia with no option for an appeal. Other lines of investigation that cast doubt on the official Czech version about Russian involvement were suppressed since if one of them is confirmed, it would disgrace the Czech authorities. In 2014, the Czech Republic was in a great rush to deliver the ammunition to the Ukrainian military and to the Islamic State immediately after conflicts broke out in Ukraine and the Middle East. It is hard to believe that the Russian secret services could react so fast, almost at the speed of light. While other European countries, such as Germany, France and Austria, are deepening their relations with Russia, the Czech Republic does the exact opposite and will be disgraced in the long run.
RESPONSE
This article contains a recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative claiming that Russia has been falsely accused of being responsible for the 2014 ammunition warehouse explosion in Vrbětice. The article describes the investigation by the Czech government into the explosion as fraudulent and baseless, yet does not provide any verifiable evidence to support its assertions, which have been thoroughly debunked in the database.
Contrary to the claim, there is conclusive evidence linking Russia’s secret services to the 2014 explosion in Vrbětice, which resulted in the death of two civilians. Czech authorities have established that Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, the same GRU agents who in 2018 poisoned Sergei Skripal in the UK, were responsible for the explosion. The two men travelled from Moscow to Prague a few days before the explosion using the same GRU-issued passports they would later use to travel to the UK in 2018. Prior to arriving in Czechia, they had booked a business appointment at the ammunition warehouse in Vrbětice using untraceable email addresses and a different set of GRU-issued passports. Once in the Czech Republic, they were issued a permit authorizing them to be in Vrbětice on 16 October 2014 – the same day the explosion occurred. The findings of Czech authorities have been verified by an independent investigation conducted by Bellingcat, The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Respekt.cz.
Reports from Czech media based on information from investigators reveal that the exploded ammunitions were most likely directed for Ukrainian forces fighting pro-Russian insurgents in Eastern Ukraine or for opposition forces in Syria fighting the Assad regime. The baseless claim that the destroyed ammunitions in Vrbětice in 2014 were meant for the Islamic State in particular is not supported by any evidence.
Contrary to the claims of the pro-Kremlin outlet, the investigation into the explosion has followed more than one line of enquiry. The initial investigation started immediately after the explosion, but faced significant challenges due to the level of destruction at the site. The primary line of reasoning of Czech investigators in 2014 was related to Imex Group, the company that owns the depot, and whether it had followed safety procedures when storing the ammunition. It was only in 2018, after British authorities revealed the involvement of GRU agents in the poisoning of Skripal, that Czech investigators learned of a possible connection between GRU operatives and the explosion in Vrbětice. They noticed that the fake names of the two GRU operatives who poisoned Skripal were the same names used by two Russian men who travelled to Vrbětice at the time of the explosion in 2014. As it would later turn out, they were indeed the same GRU operatives, with real names Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin.
Read similar cases of disinformation in the database claiming that Czechs could not make an objective investigation of the Vrbetice incident, that Bulgaria joined the accusations against Russia because the Czech Republic had no evidence, that the story about GRU in Vrbětice is likely made-up, and that the Czech investigation into Russian connection to 2014 explosion is insane.