Disinfo: The claim that GRU was involved in the 2014 Vrbětice explosion is fake

Summary

The Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs does not want to tell Moscow all details about the investigation of the Vrbětice explosion. This is evidence that the whole story is made up.

We can see the popular couple Petrov and Boshirov is used as two trump cards. It is all about myths and fakes, just to distract the audience from internal problems.

Disproof

Pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the explosion of an ammunition depot in Czechia in 2014, attempting to dismiss any accusations against the Kremlin as trumped-up anti-Russian smears.

The investigation by Czech authorities has established beyond doubt that GRU agents Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, the same individuals considered responsible for the attempted murder of Sergey Skripal in Salisbury in 2018, were behind an explosion in an ammunition storage depot in the Czech location of Vrbetice in 2014, which killed two people. According to investigators, an email supposedly from the National Guard of Tajikistan had requested permission for two individuals - ”Ruslan Tabarov” from Tajikistan and “Nicolaj Popa” from Moldova - to visit the storage site and included the scanned image of two false passports with the pictures of both men. The images of “Tabarov” and “Popa” matched those of Chepiga and Mishkin.

The mentioned “Petrov” and “Boshirov” – identified by Bellingcat as GRU officials Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga – are currently wanted by the Czech authorities and the police.

The Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic, Jan Hamáček, said at a press conference: "As far as I know, there is only one investigative version of the case, and it is connected with the movement of those members of unit 29155."

Also, the Czech government is not the only source of information available. Prague's findings were independently corroborated by a joint investigation conducted by Bellingcat, The Insider (Russia), Der Spiegel (Germany), and Respekt.cz (Czech Republic).

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cz.sputniknews.com (Archived)
  • Reported in: Issue 242
  • DATE OF PUBLICATION: 19/04/2021
  • Article language(s) Czech
  • Countries and/or Regions discussed in the disinformation: Czech Republic, Russia
  • Keywords: Vrbetice explosion, GRU
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