MOSCOW, April 25. /TASS/. Czech President Milos Zeman spoke quite objectively about the situation around the 2014 Vrbetice depots blasts, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, said on Sunday.
"We must give credit to Milos Zeman who spoke quite objectively in a situation when everyone bends to the United States’ position. He did not rule out that the explosion at the munitions depot in Vrbetice in 20214 had stemmed from ‘unprofessional handling of explosive substances’ and said that this was the primary theory to be looked at aby the investigators. According to news agencies, the president also said that the Czech counter-intelligence services had no evidence or proof that ‘those two agents had visited the Vrbetice area,’" he wrote on his Telegram channel.
He stressed that the Czech Republic had put itself and its allies in an awkward position because of its accusations against Russia but begins to understand it.
"It looks like Prague is beginning to understand that having overblown a scandal from nothing it has got into an awkward situation. To put in in a nutshell, they have driven themselves into a corner, put their allies in an awkward position, destroyed relations diplomats have been building for years. And now they have to back-pedal," he wrote.
"First, the Czech Republic has punished itself twice: it has deprived its citizens of a possibility to receive an effective Russian vaccine and has reduced its embassy in Moscow to zero. The Czech diplomatic mission has fallen victim to Prague’s decision to expel Russian diplomats that was taken under a far-fetched provocative pretext," he added.
According to the Russian lawmaker, the scandal between the Czech Republic and Russia is a vivid example of why "the United States has been so active in promoting the idea of rejuvenation of heads of state in European countries." "We remember how independent Europe was in the times of French President Jacques Chirac, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. And now we see how the Europeans are losing their independence and sovereignty, with their leaderships rejuvenated," he emphasized.
Czech President Milos Zeman said earlier on Sunday that the Czech Security Information Service’s reports had no mention of any evidence of the presence of any "Russian agents" at the munitions depot in Vrbetice and this theory had surfaced only in the recent weeks. Moreover, according to the Czech president, the country’s law enforces found evidence that Bulgarian arms trader Emilian Gebrev had been involved in the explosions at munitions depots in the village of Vrbetice, in the Czech Republic’s east, in 2014.
On April 17, Czech officials announced a decision to expel 18 employees of the Russian Embassy in Prague, who were allegedly "officers of Russian intelligence services." In response, Moscow declared 20 employees of the Czech Embassy in Russia’s capital personae non grata. Prague condemned this response as ‘inadequate" and demanded that they had to be returned back by 13:00 Moscow time on Thursday.
Prague claims Moscow was allegedly involved in the blasts at a munitions depots in the village of Vrbetice, back in 2014 that killed two people. The Russian Foreign Ministry lodged a strong protest to the Czech government.