Russian GRU was behind the attack in Vrbětice, NCOZ confirms

[dep_b]

Pretending you're not at war with Russia does not stop them from acting like they are already at war with you.

[benterix]

We are talking about 2014 here, I don't think NATO was at war with Russia even by their propagandists standards. On the contrary, everybody was shocked that they decided to invade Donbas and Crimea just like that.

[petre]

In response, NATO should blow up the Russian ammunition depots in Cobasna, Transnistria

[wiseowise]

Who could’ve thought?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Kalynivka_ammunition_de... and dozens of other Ukrainian munition depots had very convenient explosions on the verge of war.

[nlitsme]

here is the google translated version:

The Russian GRU was behind the attack in Vrbětice, NCOZ confirmed

The Police of the Czech Republic, the National Central Office against Organized Crime completed the investigation of the case concerning the explosions of ammunition warehouses in Vrbětice in 2014. The conclusions of the investigation show that the NCOZ considers it proven that the explosions of both warehouses in Vrbětice were carried out by members of Russian military intelligence, the Main Administration of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, known by the abbreviation GRU, whose motive was to prevent the delivery of weapons and ammunition to the areas where the Russian military carried out its operations. The NCOZ thus confirmed the information previously obtained by the Security Information Service.

The Russian GRU was behind the attack in Vrbětice, NCOZ confirmed

#BIS#NCOZ#GRU#Verbětice#vyšetrování#Koudelka

Published: 4/29/2024

In its report, the NCOZ states, among other things: "Russian military intelligence had the means to cause explosions, including persons who traveled from Russia for this purpose and immediately traveled back, and in addition, according to the findings of the NCOZ, they had detailed information about the stored goods, their movement and its end user. According to the findings of the National Central Office against Organized Crime, the perpetrators were members of unit 29155 designed to carry out diversionary operations abroad under the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center of the GRU."

According to BIS director Michal Koudelka, it is crucial that NCOZ confirmed the information previously collected by the Service: "NCOZ did top-notch work on a very complex case and proved that officers of the Russian military intelligence service GRU carried out a heinous attack on our territory that cost the lives of two innocent Czechs citizens and caused billions in property damage.”

The police drew attention to the fact that the suspects are staying in Russia and the authorities of the Russian Federation refused to fulfill the demands made by the Czech Republic through international legal assistance. Because of this, the NCOZ cannot obtain additional information that would enable the initiation of criminal prosecution, and for this reason, pursuant to § 159a, paragraph 5 of the Criminal Code, it decided to postpone the case.

In its decision, the NCOZ noted the participation of Russian military intelligence in causing the explosions and the death of Czech nationals, including the fact that this was not an isolated action, but part of a long-term diversionary operation by Russian military intelligence on the territory of the European Union and Ukraine.

The NCOZ report goes on to say that “police officers from the National Organized Crime Center investigated the matter as part of a joint investigation team with police officers from the UK and worked closely with police authorities from Ukraine and the US. The screening also took place in cooperation with other security forces of the Czech Republic and abroad, with the fact that additional partial knowledge, especially about the movement and used identity of persons of interest, was required through international judicial cooperation in Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Austria, the Netherlands and Greece .”

[severino]

I'm not sure there's something new since this was announced in 2021.

[BlueTemplar]

> caused billions in property damage

Stood out to me... is that an exaggeration or very literal ?

(Looks like the two depots hold together 150 tons of munitions.)

[swiftcoder]

I apreciate that investigations take time, but a decade to confirm a foreign power was involved?

[bananapub]

that's not what you're observing, you just saw a headline about how after a decade they are saying it publically.

[bamboozled]

site is down, didn't get an archive link either :(

[vesinisa]

It would probably relate to this event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...

At least Wikipedia already treats the involvement of Russian intelligence as a fact.

[weinzierl]

What I saw before it went down was in Czech. If it was not content negotiation messing with me the page (as is) would not be that useful for most people here anyways.

[sharpshadow]

It’s up for me.

[osivertsson]

baybal2: All your submissions and comments on HN are ”dead” and not visible to users unless they enable “showdead” in the settings. Either way no one can reply to you.

I recognize your nick from good thoughtful discussions from a few years back. My guess HN admins made your account “dead” because of the high number of posts with support for Ukraine.

[pjc50]

I've been round and vouched for their comments in this thread. Not quite sure what's happened moderation wise, but almost all their comments for the past few months are on the war, which are dead, except for a couple on other subjects which are not dead. I wonder if there's a flagging ring going on.

[rstuart4133]

> baybal2: All your submissions and comments on HN are ”dead” and not visible to users

Thanks for making me look.

It's unfortunate. baybal2's comments are thought provoking. I'm not sure what nationality he is, but the non-western perspective he brings does add a lot. (Edit: ethnic Chinese, Russian passport. The perspective I'm seeing is someone with a deep understanding of the authoritarian mindset. His understand of the western mindset is not so good. The contrast between the two mindsets is very enlightening.)

Even more thought provoking is their automatic "dead" status. It seems some pychops activity is happening here on HN, right under our very noses.

It's a pity I have to hack the CSS to read them. But I guess I should be thankful I can do that. If the web had evolved into something like PDF, I couldn't.

Edit: I've read a lot of his comments now. Even innocuous stuff like this is [dead]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34565515 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34523525 Someone has really got it in for him. It's amazing you can pull a stunt like this off on HN. Here I was thinking it would be immune to such malarkey.

[trickstra]

And you created this account just to write this comment? Sounds totally legit...

[flohofwoe]

Maybe you should contact the Czech secret service and let them know about your groundbreaking investigation ;)

[raverbashing]

Certainly only tourists /s