DISINFO: There are serious doubts about the official version of the Vrbetice incident
SUMMARY
There is some discrepancy in the official version about the responsibility of Russia's secret service agents for the Vrbetice explosion. One of the pieces of evidence, used by Prague, was the email from agents to the owner of Vrbetice storage. But in the journalistic investigation, the email never was published. Only pictures of passports of agents from the letter were presented. It shows that the investigation is doubtful, the email was falsified or even does not exist. The images of passports Czech secret service could have gotten from its puppet-masters foreign partners.
RESPONSE
A recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the explosion in Vrbetice in 2014.
The narrative used is manipulation. The email was not the only evidence. The official investigation, as well as journalistic investigation, presented much more details and circumstances of the Vrbetica incident. Even though Russia does not recognise its responsibility, the investigation by Czech authorities established beyond doubt that GRU agents Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, the same individuals considered responsible for the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, were behind an explosion in an ammunition storage depot in the Czech location of Vrbetice in 2014, which killed two people.
According to investigators, an email supposedly from the National Guard of Tajikistan had requested permission for two individuals - ”Ruslan Tabarov” from Tajikistan and “Nicolaj Popa” from Moldova - to visit the storage site and included the scanned image of two false passports with the pictures of both men. The images of “Tabarov” and “Popa” matched those of Chepiga and Mishkin.
Prague's findings were independently corroborated by a joint investigation conducted by Bellingcat, The Insider (Russia), Der Spiegel (Germany), and Respekt.cz (Czechia). Their investigation concluded that six officers of the GRU, led by the head of the military unit 29155, general Andrey Averyanov, were involved in this operation. Two of them worked undercover as diplomatic couriers.
For EU reaction in connection with the Vrbetice case see here.
See more cases of disinformation linked to the Vrbetice incident: The ‘highly likely’ argument is used again the spread lies about Russia; Czech Republic’s accusations about Kremlin involvement in Vrbetice explosions are part of Russophobic campaign; Czech could not make an objective investigation of the Vrbetice incident.