The Kremlin propagandist could not bear it: he said everything he thought about the GRU operation in the Czech Republic

“What is the Czech Republic trying to tell us? That criminals kept weapons in a private warehouse with them that could supply the average European state for a perennial civil war. And they, the Czechs, did nothing about it.

And then Boshirov and Petrov arrived and blew up that warehouse (…). And the average European state can now sleep easy. Well, if that’s the case, then I’m proud to meet these brave knights of world justice for peace, ”wrote RT Executive Director M. Simonian on her April 20 Twitter account. Such a ditrambir sounded at a time when Moscow is roaring for the expulsion of its diplomats from the Czech Republic.

And not for anyone, but for two assassins: GRU agents sent by the Kremlin, who blew up an ammunition depot in a covert and illegal operation in the Czech Republic in 2014, killed two people and tried to kill two Russians guarded by the British in another. NATO country, United Kingdom.

Ms Simonian became famous all over the world as the author of an absurd interview. It was in 2018 that he spoke to the aforementioned GRU officers who adored the calm faces of tourists who had only been to the UK and who wanted to admire Salisbury Cathedral. The world has never heard of the failed Kremlin actors Boširov and Petrov, but that was not their first name.

Complex GRU operation

On October 11, 2014, an Aeroflot plane landed in Prague. Unlike in August 1968, when the Soviets began to crush the Prague Spring, this time the company of well-armed and plainclothes paratroopers and special paratroopers did not hang from the Aeroflot plane.

Among other passengers, two Russian citizens quietly advanced towards passport control. Both presented their identity documents: the passports contained the names of Alexander Petrov, born in 1979, and Ruslan Boshirov, born in 1978.

The two “sports supplement vendors” first stayed in Prague to photograph the cathedral and then stayed in a modest hotel in Ostrava, 370 km to the east. It is not yet known exactly when, but they finally reached a munitions depot in the east of the country near the village of Vrbetice, owned by the state-owned Imex.

Only the newcomers were no longer “A. Petrov ”and“ R. Boširov ”: they provided the security guards with permits to visit this warehouse from October 13 to 17 and their passports. The guards reviewed the documents: the passports contained the names that Imex had received from the National Guard of Tajikistan a little earlier, they were interested in ordering ammunition: it was alleged that the military inspectors – Tajikistan Ruslan Tabarov and Nicolai Popa from Moldova.

October 16, 9 pm 25 min. in stock no. 16 A massive explosion devastated, destroying 58 tons of explosives and killing two Imex workers. Barely half an hour after the explosion, an Aeroflot plane took off from Vienna airport to Moscow, 300 km from the scene of the tragedy, with an A. Petrov ”and“ R. Boširov ”.

These names became famous only in 2018, after a botched chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, UK, when the two “tourists” used Novičiok in an attempt to poison Sergei Skripal. It failed: only one Briton died, several more people, including S. Skripalis, his daughter were poisoned but survived. Then it became clear that the real names of the “tourists” were Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, high-ranking officers of the Russian military intelligence GRU of the secret unit No. 29155.

The Kremlin boldly denied having contributed to both the use of chemical weapons in Salisbury and the bombing in the Czech Republic, although for the latter operation, “A. Petrov ”and“ R. Boširov ”was personally awarded to Putin. And in both cases, an infamous Kremlin propagandist, M. Simonian, the head of the RT channel, stood up to defend these GRU officers.

Golovatov’s lesson, wanted by Lithuania

The fact that the investigation of the explosion in the ammunition depot lasted almost 7 years, Czech officials explain the difficult circumstances: at first, even all the extremes of the offer bounced off the blind wall. A “difficult circumstance” is delicate: the Imex ammunition depot is linked to the arms trade.

It has already been announced that the Czech police and acting Foreign Minister Jan Hamaček are inclined to adhere to the version that the bombing of the ammunition depot was accidental: according to the investigators’ version, the Russian scouts planned to carry out the bombardment after ammunition. was delivered to Bulgaria. The shipment is believed to have been destined for the “businessman” and indeed the arms dealer Emilian Gebrev.

An attempt was made to poison him in 2015, but he survived. A Bulgarian court has prosecuted three Russians for this poisoning attempt. E. Gebrev’s shipment is believed to have been destined for Ukraine, which has been at war with Russian-backed separatists in the southeast of the country since 2014. According to another version, the ammunition was destined for Syrian rebels who had fought against it. Bashar Al-Assad’s regime and the Russians who supported it.

However, in 2018, after the Skripaliai poisoning, the study was renewed and you will want to move slowly but forward: the Czechs know “A. Petrovo ”and“ R. Boširov’s faces allowed a breakthrough and a connection. It turned out that “A. Petrov ”and“ R. Boširov was not the only GRU agent in the Czech Republic.

“R. Boširov “- in fact, Colonel A. Čepiga of the GRU with” Sergey Fedotov “- in fact, Major General of the GRU Denis Sergeyev visited the Czech Republic in January 2014, a month before the occupation of Crimea and a few months before of the war in Donbas Sergeyev later emerged as a former GRU third man in Operation Salisbury.

Additionally, GRU General Andrei Averjanov, who led the entire operation in the Czech Republic, also visited the Czech Republic on October 2, 2 weeks before the bombing, and flew as a tourist to the Portuguese capital Lisbon. Interestingly, the GRU general used a tactic that allowed Russian diplomats to evade one of the most famous wanted people in Lithuania: in 2011, Mikhail Golovatov, a former commander of the special alpha unit who broke into the Vilnius television tower. in 1991, he was briefly detained. in Austria under an arrest warrant issued by Lithuania. January 13th. At least one defender of the television tower, one of the 14 victims, was killed by bullets fired by Alpha assailants.

M. Golovatov was released by Austria due to a wrongly worded arrest warrant by Lithuanian officials: Mikhail was written in English instead of Mikhail. Later, the Austrians put forward more arguments, but one letter was enough as a pretext to free the former Soviet KGB officer wanted by the Lithuanians.

Averianov presented a passport under the name Overjanov, giving the GRU general access to the Schengen area, where he could already move freely and try various ways of traveling: after buying a ticket to Vienna, he did not use it, flew to Geneva and returned to Moscow. via Warsaw. A few days later, he had already flown to Vienna, from where he arrived in the Czech Republic by car, and met with “A. Petrov ”and“ R. Boširov ”and returned to the Austrian capital on the 15th before the explosion and flew to Moscow.