The Russia connectionAlleged Kremlin Poison Plot Highlights Czechs' Russian Spy Problem
A suspected Russian intelligence agent was reported to have flown into the Czech capital with a deadly mission. The agent was tasked with taking out three local Czech officials, including the mayor of Prague, Zdenek Hrib. Each of the three had taken or supported steps that angered Moscow, including the removal of a statue of a controversial Soviet general and the renaming of the square in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague after the slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov. Western intelligence experts find the alleged plot possible, especially given the number of Russian spies reported to be operating out of the Czech Republic.
A suspected Russian intelligence agent was reported to have flown into the Czech capital with a deadly mission.
The agent was tasked with taking out three local Czech officials, including the mayor of Prague, Zdenek Hrib, according to the Czech investigative weekly Respekt.
Each of the three had taken or supported steps that angered Moscow, including the removal of a statue of a controversial Soviet general and the renaming of the square in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague after the slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov.
One of the alleged targets, Ondrej Kolar, a district mayor in Prague, was blunt, saying he had been told by Czech authorities that the Russian had been dispatched to “liquidate” him and the two others.
Upon arrival the suspected intelligence agent was driven to the Russian Embassy compound in a leafy residential neighborhood of Prague, according to Respekt, which broke the story on April 26.
Respektsaid the Russian national entered the country with a suitcase containing the toxin ricin. That suitcase could have escaped customs inspection as per diplomatic protocol.
There are few other details in the Respekt report that, nevertheless, has sparked outrage in Prague and denials in Moscow, which has been accused of similar plots in the past, including the 2018 poisoning in Britain of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said it was “not acceptable — if it’s true — for a foreign state to take action against our citizens here.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has dismissed the reports, saying it “looked like a canard.”
Russia’s “Spy War”
But Western intelligence experts find the alleged plot possible, especially given the number of Russian spies reported to be operating out of the Czech Republic.
For John Schindler, a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer, the ricin scandal would mark a dangerous escalation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s espionage activities in the West.
“Russian intelligence services feel safe operating very aggressively in Prague, I’ve gotten their rough treatment there myself, but the ricin thing is crazy, insane even for the Kremlin. Putin’s gloves are off now,” Schindler told RFE/RL.
In 2006, Putin launched his “spy war” against NATO and the European Union, gradually increasing the number of Kremlin spies operating abroad, Schindler has said.
