It was
"dishonest and inappropriate" of the Czech side to make such an
unfriendly step, the Russian foreign ministry said.
MOSCOW, June 5.
/TASS/. Russia will respond adequately to the expulsion of two employees of the
Russian Culture Center in Prague, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday.
It was
"dishonest and inappropriate" of the Czech side to make such an
unfriendly step, the ministry said. "The Czech authorities have done
serious damage to the Russian-Czech relations, without any grounds," it
noted. "Prague’s actions will be followed by an adequate response,
moreover they will be reckoned with while developing Russia’s policy towards
the Czech Republic. Such provocations should be answered for."
The Czech media
reported back in April, citing sources in the Czech special services, that a
Russian national holding a diplomatic passport had allegedly arrived in Prague
carrying ricin, a highly potent toxin. The man allegedly headed to the Russian
embassy and the poison could be meant for several Czech municipal politicians who
had been behind the dismantling of the monument to Soviet Marshal Konev.
Czech Prime Minister
Andrej Babis said back then he doubted those allegations could have anything
with the reality and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed those
allegations as absurd, saying that no one "in full possession of his
faculties" could take them as anything real.
On June 5, Russia’s
embassy in Prague received a note from the Czech foreign ministry notifying of
the expulsion of two embassy staffers. Before that, Czech Prime Minister Andrej
Babis told a news conference that two Russian diplomats had been declared personae
non grata. He admitted however that the ricin case had proved to be fabricated.
It followed a false signal from a Russian embassy employee to the Czech
counterintelligence services about allegedly plotted attack on Czech officials,
he said.
Source: ITAR-TASS
06-05-2020
