EURONEWS: Moscow and Prague Expel Diplomats Over Deadly 2014 Explosion

The director of the EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy Vladimír Bartovic was a guest of Good Morning Europe, broadcast of Euronews. The interview covered the current worsening of international relationship between The Czech Republic and Russia which escalated because of the explosion of an ammunitions storage depot at Vrbětice.

The Czech services discovered what exactly happened in 2018 but the process of reporting and collecting the evidence took two years, hence the delay in revelation. We must acknowledge that according to Czech services, all of the 18 Russian diplomats were intelligence operatives. We can see the worsening of diplomatic relations during the last couple of years, now the whole situation just escalated. The Czech Republic will expect some kind of solidarity of EU and NATO member states as well as exclusion of Russian diplomats. EU countries could also enlarge the sanction list of Russians connected to the explosion in Vrbětice. There is a common understanding between Czech political elite that what Russia did was a terrorism act and although The Czech Republic was not its primarily target it resulted as such. 

Vladimír Bartovic
President

Expertise: EU institutional issues, Economic and Monetary Union, € and European budget, Brexit, EU foreign policy, EU enlargement with the focus on Western Balkans, Slovak foreign and domestic policy and economic issues