MOSCOW, June 7. /TASS/. There is no domestic demand in the Czech Republic for worsening relations with Russia and this is done deliberately by a certain part of the country’s elite, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

"People in the Czech Republic do not need it. I think people in that country, first, have the right to decide and form their attitude to Russia, to people living in our country, to its agenda. But no one asks their opinion. No one has ever asked the people about what has begun to fall apart in the bilateral relations on the part of Prague," she said in an interview with Vecher (Evening) with Vladimir Solovyov program on the Rossiya-1 television channel. "No questions have been asked to the people about how to build this policy. So, it is obvious that it meets neither pragmatic interests nor the domestic agenda. There is no demand for that. But the relations are being impaired deliberately by a certain part of the Czech elite."

"We have already demonstrated on the example of this filthy campaign around the Marshal Konev monument who is behind this elite," she said. "Partnership means that partners will never do harm to one another. But what we see is that a Western partner keeps on bringing something destructive to the Czech Republic, its policy."

On June 5, the Czech Foreign Ministry notified the Russian embassy of Prague’s decision to expel two embassy employees. Before that, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told a news conference that two Russian diplomats had been declared personae non grata. According to him, media reports of a Russian diplomat bringing ricin, a highly potent toxin, into the country, which was allegedly meant for those behind the demolition of the monument to WWII Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev in Prague, turned out to be fake. Babis said the ricin scandal followed a false signal from a Russian embassy employee to the Czech counterintelligence services about allegedly plotted attack on Czech officials, raising tensions between the two countries.