As respond for similar act: Moscow expels 20 Czech diplomats from Russia
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced, on Sunday evening, the expulsion of 20 Czech diplomats in response to the Czech decision to deport 18 employees of the Moscow embassy in Prague.
In a statement, the ministry confirmed that Prague’s ambassador to Moscow, Vitezslav Pivonka, had been summoned to express a decisive protest against the Czech authorities ’action against the Russian embassy.
The ministry stated that it had informed Pivonka that 20 employees of the Czech embassy in Moscow had been declared persona non grata, as they were instructed to leave the territory of Russia until the end of April 19.
Later, the director of the International Affairs Department in the Czech Presidency, Rudolf Jendrak, clarified that 5 diplomats would remain in the Prague embassy in Moscow.
On Saturday, the Czech government announced that it had expelled 18 Russian diplomats from the Moscow embassy in Prague, claiming that they were “officers in the Foreign Intelligence Service and the General Administration of Russian Intelligence”.
The Czech authorities said that this measure was taken in light of the discovery of new circumstances in the accident of an ammunition depot explosion in the city of Vrpetice in 2014, where Prague claimed that it took place with the participation of Russian intelligence agents.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said, in a statement issued on these developments, that “the Czech authorities took an unprecedented decision under artificial and unfounded pretexts”.
The Russian Foreign Ministry added: “This hostile step represents a continuation of a series of anti-Russian measures taken by the Czech Republic in recent years.
It is also not possible to notice the US impact in these events.
In its endeavor to please the United States against the backdrop of its recent imposition of new sanctions on Russia, the Czech authorities have gone beyond even their owners at the other end of the ocean.
