The Czech police ended the explosions in military warehouses in the village of Vrbetice in 2014. investigation. The so-called Salisbury tourists are GRU hitmen linked to the attack.
The researchers are forced to stop
Forensic experts have confirmed that the incidents, which killed two people and caused billions in damage, were no accident. Investigators have proven that the organizer of the bombings of warehouses in the Czech Republic is the Russian military intelligence GRU and its agents, who also carried out the attack in the British city of Salisbury.
However, as the “Radio Prague International” portal reports, the National Center for Combating Organized Crime (NCOZ) currently states that the trial has been postponed because there is no possibility to continue the criminal prosecution of the perpetrators.
“In its conclusion, the NCOZ found that Russian military intelligence contributed to the organization of the explosions and the death of Czech citizens. This was not the only such action, but part of a long-term program of subversive activities of Russian military intelligence on the territory of the EU and Ukraine,” officials said in a press release.
The researchers note that the special military intelligence group “29155” related to the bombing of military warehouses, formed to carry out diversions abroad, is under the 161st training center for special purpose specialists of the GRU. The warehouses belonged to the Czech state-owned company, the Institute of Military Technology, from which the Imex Group leased them.
Spy: N. Šapošnikovas provided information to the perpetrators of the diversion about the objects stored in the warehouses of Vrbeticė. / Wikipedia photo
“Tourists” from Salisbury
According to the NCOZ report, the perpetrators of the bombing were Anatoly Chepiga (under the guise of Ruslan Boshyrov) and Aleksandr Myshkin (under the guise of Aleksandr Petrov), in 2018. In March in Salisbury, he committed an attempt on the lives of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. The investigative journalism group “Bellingcat” also traced the traces of these actors in the Czech Republic. The GRU agents themselves explained on Russian propaganda television that they were tourists who wanted to admire the Salisbury church tower.
GRU agents entered the ammunition depots using forged passports, posing as experts from Moldova and Tajikistan. However, the Czech police cannot press charges against the saboteurs because they are on the territory of the Russian Federation. This country, the press release said, does not cooperate with Czech law enforcement authorities and does not extradite suspects for criminal prosecution.
“The Russian authorities have refused to comply with the Czech Republic’s requests for international legal assistance on the grounds that examining the Czech request could harm Russia’s sovereignty, public order and important interests,” the Czech police said.
Mysterious incidents
Bellingcat researchers analyzed phone call logs, which showed that between 2014 and 2015 several members of the “29155” group actively communicated with the Russian army in the Donbass and the leaders of local military groups.
Unnamed sources told investigators that after 2014 Russian military intelligence reached out to arms dealers for ammunition for the Ukrainian military and offered significantly higher prices to get the goods before Ukraine.
However, in 2014 At the end of the year, when the incidents occurred in the ammunition warehouses in the village of Vrbetice, there was no public knowledge of such behind-the-scenes competitions. The first explosion occurred on October 16. Two people died that time.
The second explosion occurred on December 3. in a warehouse where 13 tons of explosives were stored. The object was 1.2 km from the first warehouse. As a result of the incident, 430 residents of Vrbeticė and other villages were urgently evacuated.
A spokesman for the Imex Group said that the warehouses contained machine guns and artillery shells, and assured them that they could not explode by themselves.
How the Russian agents blew up the warehouses and why about a month and a half passed between the first and second explosions, the police have not yet disclosed.
Traces: The explosions in the Czech Republic were carried out by a pair of GRU hitmen who became famous after the attack in Salisbury. / Wikipedia photo
Chain of events
in 2021 In the spring, the Vrbetic case had a significant impact on Czech foreign and domestic politics. The then president Miloš Zeman stopped showing support for Russian interests in the Czech Republic, and the topic of Russia’s possible participation in the process of completing the construction of the Dukovany nuclear power plant was raised. The Czech Republic decided on an unprecedented decision: it demanded that some of the employees of the Russian embassy leave the country: out of 48, only eight remained in the end.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a strong protest to Prague for this unreasonable step and declared 20 employees of the Czech Embassy in Moscow as undesirable persons.
The attacks in the Czech Republic came a few years after Russia’s first act of sabotage in NATO countries. The same hitman from the GRU group “29155” in 2011. blew up an ammunition warehouse in the Bulgarian city of Lovnidolo in November. Artillery shells destined for Georgia were stored in this warehouse. The same attackers also tried to poison the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, one of Imex’s clients.
At that time, Georgia was actively looking for 152mm shells, and Gebrev’s Emco, one of Europe’s largest ammunition resellers, agreed with Imex to ship thousands of artillery shells of this type to Bulgaria. The same businessman later sold weapons to Ukraine.
Bulgarian prosecutors charged three members of the 29155 group and issued arrest warrants for the attack on the businessman. A video was released showing one of the attackers applying a suspected poisonous substance to the car handles of the businessman, his son and a senior manager in a garage near Gebrev’s company office in Sofia.
This attempt occurred before the incident in Salisbury, so there were no tests that could identify the Bulgarian as an attempt to poison Novichok. However, there is no doubt that the businessman was also a victim of this Russian chemical weapon attack.
A dissident pretender
The latest investigation by the investigative journalism platform “The Insider” revealed that two Russian spies Nikolay and Yelena Shaposhnikova, who worked in the Czech Republic, helped the GRU to organize explosions in warehouses in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria and to assassinate E. Gebrev.
The Russian authorities have refused to comply with Czech requests for international legal assistance, saying that examining the Czech request could harm Russian sovereignty.
N. Shapošnikov in the Czech Republic in 1991. was granted political asylum. He made such a request calling himself a dissident, presenting as evidence his expulsion from the Communist Party of the USSR, although the real reason for his expulsion was theft from the unit in which he served. in 1992 Jelena and her two children also received asylum.
Next, the Shapošnikovs, hiding some facts of their biography from the Czech authorities, applied for citizenship – Nikolay received a Czech passport in 1999, and Jelena in 2004. According to the journalists, she was obviously helped to do this by the then corrupt Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross.
At the beginning of the century, N. Šapošnikovas started working for the company “Imex”. His wife was officially engaged in the import of pig iron from the former Soviet republics, but, as the Czech police later found out, she “actively guided her husband’s actions” in coordination with GRU General Andrey Averyanov, the head of the 29155 group.
Conspiracy villa
Mr. Shapošnikov earned about $650 a month at Imex, and the official family income, according to Czech investigators, in some cases could not even cover a monthly phone bill. However, this did not prevent Ms. Shapošnikova from having a company with preferential taxation in the Marshall Islands and two accounts in Swiss banks.
in 2009 Shapošnikova for almost 280 thousand. bought a villa in Greece. The woman claimed to the Czech investigators that she was helped by her parents living in Kyiv, whose pension, as the investigators found out, was less than 300 dollars.
in 2010 The Shapošnikovs moved to a villa they named “Jelena” and rarely came to the Czech Republic.
Investigators speculate that officers of the 29155 group used to meet at the villa: as soon as the Shaposhnikovs moved to Greece, after starting regular flights to nearby Thessaloniki.
General A. Averjanovas himself visited the villa. Some of the trips coincided with GRU operations in the region, for example, according to The Insider, the day after the assassination attempt on E. Gebreva, Alexei Kapinos, who served under “29155”, arrived in Thessaloniki with a diplomatic passport. Shapošnikov told Czech investigators that he was a “family friend”.
In an interview with “The Insider”, E. Gebrev recalled that the Shapošnikovs back in 2012 tried to establish a relationship with him, although they had no business in common. J. Shapošnikova has always tried to turn the conversation in her favor.
According to “The Insider” sources, after the poisoning of E. Gebrev, N. Shaposhnikov tried to impose another supplier on the buyers in the Government of Ukraine, but Ukraine never signed a contract with him due to the unsatisfactory quality of the goods.
Wikipedia photo.
Tags: official warehouses Czech Republic blown Russian intelligence
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