[ad_1]
It was the Czech weekly magazine Respekt that revealed that a Russian agent with a diplomatic passport landed at Vaclav Havelflygplatsen in Prague three weeks ago.
According to sources in the newspaper in the Czech security service, he is supposed to have brought ricin, an extremely deadly poison, known, among other things, that the Soviet KGB used it in 1978 in the murder of a Bulgarian defender.
How the security police knows this is unclear, as to why the man was not arrested. Now he is believed to be at the Russian embassy in Prague.
Russian security service He has been repeatedly accused of attacks abroad. Most notable is the attempted murder of the spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia in Britain’s Salisbury 2018, and earlier the murder of defender Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
Therefore, the Czech authorities are obviously taking this seriously.
Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek called the Russian ambassador and warned of “consequences” if something happened to Czech politicians.
Two people are identified as targets for a murder plot. He is the Mayor of Prague, Zdenek Hrib, and Ondrej Kolar, Mayor of Prague 6, one of the capital’s districts.
These two have tormented Russia With a decision recently.
Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP
Photo: Petr David Josek / AP
Hrib renamed a square in Prague, which is also the address of the Russian Embassy, to Boris Nemtsov square, after the Russian opposition leader and critic of Putin who was assassinated a stone’s throw from the Kremlin in 2015.
And Kolar led to the removal of a statue of Ivan Konev, a Soviet marshal who was one of the top commanders of the Red Army during World War II.
The statue was lifted from its pedestal on April 3, prompting the Russian Federal Police to immediately initiate a preliminary investigation into “violations of Russia’s military honor symbols,” a crime that Russia believes can be prosecuted even if it is committed abroad.
Photo: Petr David Josek / AP
Photo: Petr David Josek / AP
Zdenek Hrib confirms They monitor him 24 hours when DN calls him.
– Yes, I get protection. But I have promised the police that they won’t say anything about the exact reason, he says.
The mayor, on the other hand, is happy to talk about the decision to call a place after Boris Nemtsov.
– Nemtsov was a brave man who criticized the Russian war in Ukraine. President Putin also misnamed those who killed him and told them to be severely punished.
The square in Prague was renamed Boris Nemtsov Square, after the Russian opposition politician and Putin’s critic who was assassinated in 2015. The square is where the Russian embassy is located.
Photo: Petr David Josek / AP
– Then I do not understand why the embassy is moving and changing the facilities to a small security guard, says ironically Hrib.
He refers to the fact that the Russian mission refuses to write Nemtsov Square as his address and is now officially located on a small side street.
The mayor has a lot of time He has been critical of the great powers Russia and China, which are very active in the Czech Republic. Prague has been regarded as one of Moscow’s “spy centers” in Europe, and there are almost 150 Russian diplomats, a very high number for a country of ten million inhabitants.
And just a few weeks ago, several hospitals in Prague, as well as the Ministry of Health, were affected by hacker attacks against their IT systems. The attacks are suspected to be organized from Russia.
– I’ve already been chased by mysterious men. It has also felt like a threat to my family, says Hrib.
Ondrej Kolar, the mayor of the district, he is less prejudiced about Russia. When DN calls you, he is in a secret location for security reasons.
“Of course I am scared,” he says.
– Everyone knows what the Russian regime is capable of, after the attempted assassination of Skripal in England. Unfortunately, the Russians are quite effective in such operations.
Kolar says he has long been harassed by people with a Russian connection, ever since he started pushing the issue of moving the Ivan Konev statue.
In Russia has World War II approach religion under Putin’s rule, and a person like Konev totally unstoppable. For many Czechs, on the other hand, a memorial to that person, who is also considered to have been behind the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union during the “Prague Spring” of 1968, is a symbol of oppression and occupation.
The statue of Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev in Prague, before being dismantled in early April.
Photo: Petr David Josek / AP
– They say we were not allowed to remove the statue. But we are an independent country. They have no right to interfere with what we do.
Ondrej Kolar says he has received daily threats via Facebook, email and phone for several months. There have also been lies about him, as if his grandfather had been a German Gestapo officer, with photos of a man with a similar last name being distributed online.
Russia denies all illegal activities in the Czech Republic, both cyber attacks and the alleged murder plot against the two mayors.
“We don’t know about this investigation, it sounds like a regular journalistic problem,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the RBK newspaper.
