Two Russian agents have been linked to high-profile poisoning and deadly explosion, but there is little Europe can do

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On Saturday, Czech police released images of two men they said were linked to an explosion that killed two people in a warehouse in Vrbetice in 2014.

A day later, the British Foreign Office said that, according to Czech authorities, the two men charged with the attempted murder of the Skripals “were also responsible for the deaths of two civilians and an explosion in the Czech town of Vrbetice.”

A Czech government source with direct knowledge of the investigation said on Monday that police suspect the explosion was premature and was not intended to happen on Czech territory.

The source, who asked for anonymity due to the ongoing investigation, said the Czech police’s organized crime unit is pursuing a line of inquiry that suggests the ammunition was intended to explode in Bulgaria after being exported there. It is not clear why the explosion occurred prematurely.

The Czech Republic said it would expel 18 workers from the Russian embassy in Prague in retaliation for the 2014 explosion, which caused massive financial and environmental damage.

Russia responded by removing 20 diplomats from the Czech embassy in Moscow.

On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the Czech Republic’s decision “provocative and unfriendly”.

Russia mocks the West

The UK believes that the two men suspected of carrying out the Salisbury attack were Russian intelligence officers, first identified by the Bellingcat investigative website as Anatoliy Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin.
The Kremlin has rejected the charges and at times seemed to mock the West for its hysterical “Russophobia”. Russian and international media subsequently confirmed Chepiga and Mishkin’s identities in interviews with residents of their native villages in the North and Far East of Russia.

If it is true that the same two men were behind this explosion, and Moscow’s response to such serious accusations remains equally slippery, it raises serious questions about what Europe can really do to curb Russia’s brutal hostility.

The Skripals were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury town center on March 4, 2018; Tests showed they had been exposed to Novichok, a nerve agent described as one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever created.
Moscow has denied any involvement in the Salisbury incident and the two men claim they were in the UK as tourists. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the two men identified as suspects are “not criminals.”

But even if Putin doesn’t believe they are criminals, there’s plenty of evidence that the two are far from innocent tourists who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In 2018, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Theresa May, told lawmakers that British authorities believed the two suspects were officers of the Russian military intelligence service known as the GRU.

“The GRU is a very disciplined organization with an established chain of command, so this was not a rogue operation,” May said in parliament. “It is almost certainly also approved outside of the GRU at a higher level of the Russian state.”

The British prosecution said at the time that it “concluded that there is sufficient evidence to offer a realistic prospect of conviction … [for] conspiracy to murder Sergei Skripal and the attempted murder of Skripal, [and] his daughter Yulia. ”

Britain’s allies were equally convinced that the two men were working on behalf of the Russian government. Former US President Donald Trump has expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning. More were expelled from 14 member states of the European Union, Canada and Ukraine.

Cathedral lovers

After entering the UK under aliases and carrying out the attack on Salisbury, “Petrov and Boshirov” are thought to have escaped home to Russia, where they are now believed to be protected by the Russian state.

If the British version of events is correct, Russia’s official response to the allegations became increasingly serious once the couple were safely home.

In September 2018, Putin said Russian authorities had identified the couple and found no evidence of criminal activity.

“Of course we looked at what kind of people they are, and we know who they are, we found them,” Putin told an audience at the Eastern Economic Forum in the Eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.

“There is nothing unusual or criminal out there, I assure you,” he insisted, adding, “Let them come out somewhere, to you in the media.”

Russians accused of Salisbury poisoning were in town 'as tourists'

The following day, the Kremlin-backed news network RT released an almost derisive interview with the pair, claiming that they were simply in the sports nutrition business and that the purpose of their three-day 6,000-mile journey was to visit Salisbury Cathedral, with its 123 meter high spire and famous clock, “the first of its kind anywhere in the world”.

The British authorities refuted the men’s claims, pointing to timestamped camera images that track movements that would be extremely unusual for tourists to the country.

The footage showed that the men arrived in the UK on March 2. On March 3, the day before the attack, they traveled to Salisbury and stayed in the city for less than two hours. They later claimed that heavy snowfall had made their tourism plans impossible, although local weather reports and video footage dispute this.

The next day they returned to Salisbury, arriving in town at 11:45 am; they were seen near Skripal’s house before noon and at 1:50 pm they boarded the train back to London. That evening they went through passport control at Heathrow Airport at 7:30 PM before boarding the plane for Moscow.

Just over a month after the RT interview, it was reported that one of the suspects had received a heroes’ honor from Vladimir Putin.
The official Russian response to Salisbury ranged from pearl-gripping claims of Russophobia from diplomats to Putin himself calling Skripal a “traitor to the motherland” and a “bastard”.

Smear campaign claims

Kremlin sympathizers are already claiming that the charges against alleged agents Petrov and Boshirov by Czech officials are part of a smear campaign against Russia.

Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, a state-sponsored think tank closely aligned with official government policy, told the BBC that, “If you look at this whole Kremlin story, I think they should was a false flag and actually the leadership of the Czech Republic is trying to do that on the eve of the EU ministerial meeting, to make Moscow’s life more difficult. ”

The meeting he is referring to is a video conference between European foreign ministers scheduled for Monday, at which they are expected to see Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine, the deteriorating health of imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny and, presumably, this one. will discuss the latest development in the Czech Republic. .

Russia’s repeated delinquent behavior should – at least on paper – make the expulsion of more diplomats and the prospect of further sanctions a blow to European leaders – especially given that US President Joe Biden appears to be in close contact with the EU. about punishing Russia.

But even as the EU unites this week in condemning Russia on a huge range of issues, the Kremlin is unlikely to be disturbed by stomping.

After all, if Putin has learned anything in recent years, it is this: no matter how serious the accusations against him are – from helping a Syrian dictator bomb his own people to punishing the attempted murder of political opponents – European leaders cannot deny their geography.

Whether in supplying natural resources or taking Europe out of its vaccination shortage crisis, as long as Russia has something to offer its neighbors to the West, pragmatic reconciliation will win the day to some extent.

CNN’s Ivana Kottasová contributed to this report.

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