The farce continues:
Czech police name Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov - the two alleged Skripal assassins - as the Russian agents allegedly behind an explosion at a munitions dump in 2014!
#Skripalsaga
They claim they have identified "various passports" the two men carried - but the connection with those explosions sounds rather speculative and more due to the desire to join in the propaganda war against Russia!
ft.com/content/93d8c6…
Scepticism over new allegations against GRU (by one of the soberest geopolitical analysts):
More details from Transatlanticist disinfo outlet @cepa:
even author @edwardlucas - member of the Russia cluster of the Integrity Initiative! - admits that the Czech investigation of the 2014 incident was "lethargic and inconclusive".
cepa.org/spying-out-the…
... and the new development was prompted by intervention of "allied services" (MI6 or CIA) who
"tipped off the Czech authorities" about the two Russians!
So it's totally believable! 🤡
So transparent:
Rosatom will now likely be excluded, - after "multiple security services of the EU and NATO countries had repeatedly urged Prague to bar the Russian corporation from taking part in the contest" to refurbish a Czech nuclear power plant!
rt.com/russia/521399-…
.@elenaevdokimov7 has unearthed more oddities of this highly dubious case:
Let's get the evidentiary basis of the case:
1) An explosion on 16 October 2014 tore apart an ammunition storage depot in a forest at Vrbetice in the Czech Republic. A second blast occurred on 3 December 150m away.
It was assumed to have been an ACCIDENT.
bbc.com/news/world-eur…
2) Czech police now "discover" two passport scans sent by email to the company which operated the depot, - different names but the images are somehow reminiscent of Bellingcat's photos for Salisbury case!
The BBC calls this "painstaking detective work" (but omits tip from MI6).
3) According to this Russian article, Czech media also claim Petrov and Boshirov happened to be, with their passports known from Salisbury incident, in the Czech Republic in October 2014.
translate.google.com/translate?sl=a…
And that's it!
No evidence whatsoever that the blast was due to sabotage (what about the second explosion?)!
If I'd piece together such a loose crime story I'd be rightly called a conspiracy theorist!
(Unless, of course, if I worked for Bellingcat.)
🙃🤡🤦♂️
Mainstream media in confirmation circle:
Western security officials praise the Czechs for piecing this together "rather well" -- leaving out that it was MI6 who provided the (implausible) "link" in the first place, see above!
ft.com/content/4fb307…
... plus whitewashing of what essentially is a loony conspiracy theory:
not only is there no evidence the explosions were due to sabotage, - there is not even a remotely plausible motive for Russia to blow up a random munition depot in a foreign country!
WTF!??
And now we also have Bellingcat's valuable background "research":
🙃🥁🤡
From which we learn:
Bellingcat were on the case for quite a while, and apparently were central for "piecing this together"!
bellingcat.com/news/2021/04/2…
!!! - Bellingcat "obtained" plenty of sensitive information they could not possibly have acquired from the infamous Russian black markets, - it can only come from Western "security sources"!
... from which Bellingcat "reconstruct" the secret operation of GRU elite Unit 29155.
What a completely senseless plot: all this effort for blowing up a random munition depot possibly destined to be sent to Ukraine or Syria, - countries which are awash in weapons anyway!
What I find most remarkable is that Bellingcat now do not even feel the need to provide any evidence at all, -- for their first dive into GRU connections (Boshirov -> Chepiga) they invented a bogus story to pretend they were still doing OSINT analysis.
The real gem in the Bellingcat article is that they confirm the Czech investigation was crucially based on those (likely fabricated) passport photos allegedly matching with the two Salisbury suspects.
(How can they even know this - unless they're fed from "security sources"?)
Now, the critical question is: how did the Czech police suddenly discover the importance of these photos - for an incident years ago that was, rightly it seems, regarded as an accident?
Fortunately, we know how: they were tipped off by MI6!
Next question: how did MI6 get hold of an email sent to an obscure Czech company 7 years ago?
They needed to get the email and photos *first* in order to realise the "visual similarity" with the passport photos of the two Salisbury suspects!
THIS is the (only) "link": 🙄🤡🙃
In short, there is no even remotely plausible way for a real criminal investigation, whether by Brits or Czechs, to have found this miraculous visual "link" (for an incident, to repeat again, long ago and not even classified as criminal, absent evidence of sabotage 👇)!
As I have conclusively shown, the (immutable) hair features of the person known as Ruslan Boshirov do not match with the various passport photos linked to him by Bellingcat, -- yet this bogus identification is at the heart of the whole GRU spy story!
Thus, we can confidently conclude that the fabrication of these photos is at the root of all these bogus stories, - passed on by the narrative managers (in MI6? or IntegrityInitiative?) to various security officials, Bellingcat and, in this case, Czech police!
And here we are:
Czech president says there is no evidence, let alone proof that Russian agents were at the ammo depot in Vrbetice!
Nor was an explosive device found at the location, --- hence no evidence of sabotage!
Just as it was sketched above!
tass.com/world/1282781
The Russian version of the Tass article has more details:
the Czech investigation is actually still *ongoing*, working with two hypotheses (one, accidental blast; two, foreign sabotage).
But the diplomatic damage has already been done (as intended)!
translate.google.com/translate?sl=r…
Ah, here's the original Czech article:
there was no further investigation by the Czech services since 2014, - only three weeks ago (!) the matter came up again based on those two highly dubious passport files!
translate.google.com/translate?hl=&…
Bear in mind that Zeman's assessment is based on the Czech intelligence report, not on media spin ... and it confirms precisely the analysis above!
And he leaves no doubt that if the "Russian agents" hypothesis is not confirmed, the case has to be regarded an "intelligence game"!
Background:
The head of the Czech counterintelligence service, Michal Koudelka, received a top award from CIA in 2019!
🧐🤡🤓
h/t @chinahand
english.radio.cz/czech-intellig…
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