DISINFO: US diplomats are involved in terrorist activities in Russia
SUMMARY
The staff of the US Embassy in Russia is involved in much more obvious hostile actions than those attributed to Moscow in the fabricated case of the Vrbětice explosion. Recently, in the Tver region, an employee of the US Embassy was caught stealing a pointer at a train station.
The Czech politicians describe what happened in Vrbětice as an act of terrorism. This wording fits better with this incident with the American diplomat in Russia.
RESPONSE
This disinformation message promotes a narrative about the “aggressive” USA trying to destabilise “peaceful” Russia. This claim is aimed to cover the direct Russian involvement in the 2014 Vrbětice munitions depot explosion.
In July 2021, the Press Secretary of the Russian MFA Maria Zakharova claimed that an American diplomat working in Russia “stole a railroad sign” in the Tver region (putting under danger the movement of trains). The US embassy has not commented on the incident, which lacks substantial evidence and has mostly been reported on by pro-Kremlin outlets.
In terms of the Vrbětice explosion, there is overwhelming evidence that Russian secret service agents were involved in this incident, which killed two people. Belingcat revealed that agents from the GRU Unit 29155, including Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, the same individuals considered responsible for the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, were in Czechia at the time of the explosion. An investigation by Czech authorities has established beyond doubt that GRU agents Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin were responsible for the explosion. The two 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 to poison Skripal. The findings of Czech authorities have been verified by an independent investigation conducted by Bellingcat, The Insider, Der Spiegel, and Respekt.cz.
Read similar cases of disinformation in the database claiming that the notion that GRU was involved in the 2014 Vrbětice explosion is fake, that the Czech investigation into Russian connection to 2014 explosions is insane, that the Vrbětice explosion is a game of intelligence services intended to hurt Czech interests and that Czechs could not make an objective investigation of the Vrbětice incident.