PRAGUE, May 31. /TASS/. First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior of the Czech Republic Jan Hamacek jeopardized the Republic’s intelligence operations abroad and possibly revealed Czech agents in Russia, the Seznam Zpravy online media reported Monday, citing Hamacek’s April 19 statement.

"The Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of the Interior has the following problem. According to security specialists, he has, apparently jeopardized Czech intelligence operations abroad and could have even helped the Kremlin to reveal Czech agents [in Russia] with his statement," the report says.

According to the report, Hamacek told the TV that, right before the announcement of the incident in Vrbetice, Czech intelligence services began withdrawing their employees from Russia. The report points out that a minister of the interior is not authorized to talk about intelligence operations abroad.

The website quoted Hamacek speaking two days after Czech authorities announced the Vrbetice incident.

"During these last couple of days [before the announcement], we’ve been staying in the Ministry of Internal Affairs together with intelligence agencies’ heads until dark, and we did everything so that these people that you’re talking about didn’t have to [leave Russia], neither by special flight, nor by car, so that Russia simply did not know about them, and [they] could just disappear quietly, because they would have probably faced not expulsion alone," the Deputy Prime Minister said at the moment.

Czech authorities claim that the responsibility for the 2014 explosions at the arms depot in Vrbetice lies with Russian nationals Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, whom London also suspects of an attempt at lives of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

On April 17, the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian embassy employees, whom it called intelligence officers. In response, Russia expressed its decisive protest over the move, taken "under groundless and contrived pretext," and expelled 20 Czech embassy employees.