DISINFO: Prague blocked information about Belarus coup by raising issue of ammo depot explosion
SUMMARY
The decision of Czech authorities to raise the issue of an explosion in an ammunition depot back in 2014 and its connection with the Salisbury poisoning in 2018 is part of an effort by Western intelligence agencies to conceal the revelation of Alyaksander Lukashenka about a possible coup d'etat in Belarus orchestrated by the United States.
RESPONSE
This report is part of a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the West and Russophobia.
Czech police said on Saturday 17 April 2021 that they were searching for two men carrying various passports, including Russian passports in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
The names matched those used by the two suspects in the attempted poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in the English city of Salisbury in 2018.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis had earlier said Prague was expelling 18 Russian diplomats over suspicions that Russian intelligence services had been involved in an ammunition depot explosion in 2014.
Russia denied any connection with the attack in Salisbury. However, Moscow's involvement in the poisoning has been proven via a thorough investigation. The British Police have presented a solid chain of evidence on the Skripal case, with pictures, connecting the suspects to the locations in the case. Parts of the material have been released to the public.
The evidence was sufficient to charge two Russian nationals, Anatoliy Chepiga and Aleksandr Mishkin with the attack on the Skripals, both Russian military intelligence operatives from the GRU, who travelled to the UK using fake names and documents. Following this attack, the United Kingdom notified the OPCW. The OPCW laboratories confirmed the UK’s identification of the Russian produced Novichok nerve agent, and specifically the purity of the toxin.
At the same time, Russian authorities on the same Saturday 17 April 2021 announced they had arrested two men in Moscow for allegedly planning a coup in Belarus. Belarussian President Alyaksander Lukashenka confirmed the arrests and said he believes the US government is behind the alleged operation as one of the suspects also holds American citizenship.
However, in his announcement on 17 April, Lukashenka did not provide evidence to back up his claim. U.S. officials did not immediately respond to the allegations, while senior Belarusian opposition figures dismissed the report.
As far as the Salisbury poisoning is concerned, similar cases claimed that it is unclear, who really poisoned Sergei and Yuliya Skripal, that Skripal and Navalny cases are both fake and were invented by the US and that Novichok is a purely “Western product”.