Eurasia Press & News
From Russian spies acting under diplomatic cover to media companies working to influence EU politics, Czechia is pushing its European allies to be more proactive in cracking down on Moscow’s covert operations in Europe.
Denouncing the “sprawling hydra of Russian secret services” across Europe, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky at the end of May called on the EU to take drastic measures to limit the freedom of movement currently enjoyed by Moscow’s diplomats stationed in Europe.
Although the EU cancelled the visa facilitation agreements after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and some 500 Russian diplomats were expelled from EU states during the first year of the conflict, this is not enough, according to Lipavsky, who has been spearheading efforts to downscale Russia’s diplomatic and espionage capabilities across the bloc.
For months now, Czechia’s top diplomat has been trying to convince his EU counterparts to introduce an EU-wide ban limiting the movement of Russian diplomats – who still enjoy travel-free across the entire Schengen Area – to the country where they’re accredited.
A document shared by Czech authorities with EU allies in November outlined several proposals, including the issuance of visas and residence permits restricted to the host country, and the mandatory use of biometric passports, which are more difficult to forge.
While Lipavsky claims the measure is supported by several Western European countries, the Baltic states and Poland – which just recently introduced its own movement restrictions on Russian diplomats at the domestic level – “there is a very low chance of such a measure passing EU-wide,” according to Pavel Havlicek, an analyst at the Association of International Affairs (AMO) in Prague.
Tellingly, almost all of Czechia’s own neighbours with the exception of Poland aren’t in favour of Prague’s proposal. “Countries like Austria and Germany are boycotting this measure, while Hungary and Slovakia are clearly against it,” Havlicek tells BIRN, adding that the latter is even considering increasing Russia’s diplomatic presence in the country.
According to the AMO analyst, the measure is mainly meant to target Russian envoys based in neighbouring countries, including those in Budapest and the hundreds of diplomats accredited in Vienna’s international institutions whose potential covert activities easily evade Czechia’s counterintelligence services in the absence of more restrictive measures.
So far, however, little progress has been made on this front, and Minister Lipavsky “is still in the process of convincing his colleagues in the EU to let the proposal be at least discussed,” according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry.
“The unrestricted movement of Russian diplomats, many of whom are spies under diplomatic cover, is a security risk for the whole of Europe,” Lipavsky tells BIRN through his press department. “I will continue to work to persuade our EU partners to stop this asymmetric privilege for Russia.”
Still lacking consensus, limiting their movement continent-wide would be a “significant step”, according to Havlicek, who notes that expulsions of suspected intelligence officers do little in the way of restricting Moscow’s espionage capabilities if Russian diplomats moonlighting as spies can thrive relatively freely and unobstructed just next door.
The tourists and the diplomats
Not that Prague hasn’t done its fair share of expelling diplomats with dubious side-gigs.
After finding “clear evidence” that Russia was responsible for the deadly 2014 explosion of a state ammunitions depot in Vrbetice – holding supplies meant to be shipped to Ukraine – the government of then-prime minister Andrej Babis in April 2021 gave more than a dozen Russian diplomats identified as GRU or SVR spies a couple of days to leave the country.
Following a series of tit-for-tat measures between Prague and Moscow, Czech authorities decided to introduce diplomatic parity and limit the number of Russian diplomats in Prague to the same number of Czech diplomats in Moscow – about half a dozen, not including other staff and personnel. This drastically reduced the size of the Russian embassy in Prague’s disproportionate 150-strong staff, whose undercover activities had long been something of an open secret.
In April, nearly a full decade after the incident, more evidence emerged unequivocally linking the 2014 blasts which killed two depot workers to the GRU’s Unit 29155, further identifying long-term Russian-born Czech residents-turned-citizens Elena and Nikolai Saposnikov as having facilitated the entire sabotage operation carried out by no other than GRU agents Alexander Mishkin and Anatoliy Chepiga – the two “Salisbury Cathedral tourists” accused of the attempted poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK in 2018.
According to an extensive investigation by The Insider, citing Czech intelligence documents, the Saposnikov couple had for years been gathering information on movements of military supplies for Russian intelligence, and were also involved in the explosion of an ammunition depot in Bulgaria and the poisoning of Bulgarian arms factory owner Emilian Gebrev.
“Russia committed a terrorist attack in our country in which two innocent people died. That is why we care so much about the security of our country, and we will continue to do so,” commented Marketa Pekarova Adamova, speaker of parliament’s lower house.
As Czechia finds itself in the spotlight for leading a global initiative to deliver hundreds of thousands of artillery shells to Ukraine, the ever-present threat of Russian sabotage remains an ever-present danger.
The parrots and the editors
As it turns out, Russian diplomats are not the only ones that Czech intelligence agencies need to screen and monitor for misleading job descriptions.
At the end of March, the Security Information Service (BIS) – one of the country’s main counterintelligence bodies which has for years been warning about the growing threat of Russian espionage and covert activities – uncovered a vast Russian influence and disinformation network operating out of the Prague-based Voice of Europe outlet.
The government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala swiftly sanctioned Voice of Europe and its two main operatives, the pro-Russian Ukrainian businessmen Artyom Marchevsky, who reportedly managed the day-to-day activities of the website and was subsequently offered temporary protection in Slovakia, and Viktor Medvedchuk, who enjoys close ties with Vladimir Putin – all three of which were then included on the EU-wide sanctions list last month.
“This is a language the Russians understand; this is how we should always act,” BIS head Michal Koudelka reacted, warning of “other similar networks operating [in Europe] that will try to threaten basic democratic principles, break European unity, and undermine trust in the state and its institutions and membership in international organisations.”
AMO’s Havlicek describes the disturbing revelations surrounding Voice of Europe as a “multi-layered” story. “On the one hand, Voice of Europe worked as a propaganda and outreach tool,” giving a platform to a number of notorious pro-Russian European politicians from across the EU to push anti-Ukrainian narratives, undermine the EU’s support for Kyiv, and sow divisions within the bloc, he says.
High-level Czech politicians have been known to appear on Voice of Europe, including former president Vaclav Klaus, Jiri Paroubek or Cyril Svoboda, but have not – at least for now – been implicated in the second, more disturbing chapter of the propaganda platform.
“Voice of Europe also worked as a money-making machine,” Havlicek explains, channelling funds directly into politicians’ pockets to ensure their loyalty and get as many friendly voices in European politics as possible.
According to BIS’s findings, money changing hands amounted to “millions” of Czech crowns (tens of thousands of euros), while additional reporting by Der Spiegel suggested it took the form of either direct cash handouts in Prague or crypto-currency exchanges.
Weeks ahead of the European elections, BIS’s revelations that politicians from at least half a dozen EU countries – including France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and Hungary – were paid directly by Russian money sent shockwaves across the continent, aggravating longstanding fears about the scope of Russia’s espionage and meddling capabilities in Europe.
“The [Czech] investigation shows that Moscow has approached European members of parliament and has also paid European members of parliament in order to promote a Russian agenda,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said as his authorities launched an investigation into what some media are already dubbing “Russiagate”.
In the wake of the revelations coming out of Czechia’s intelligence community, prosecutors in Poland – where the owner of Voice of Europe is officially registered – were fast to conduct raids and seizures, and the authorities in the Netherlands – where Voice of Europe was based before relocating to the Czech Republic in 2016 – also launched their own investigation into the allegations. Two top politicians for Germany’s far-right AfD party, including Maximilian Krah who has since resigned as chairman, also found themselves in the crosshairs of investigators on suspicion of accepting bribes.
Just a week before the EU elections, Belgian police conducted a raid in European Parliament offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, in coordination with the French authorities, suspecting a “European Parliament employee [who] played a significant role” in Russian interference operations.
“Not a single bullet is flying against the EU; there are no bombs – at least not yet,” commented Anton Shekhovtsov, head of the Vienna-based Centre for Democratic Integrity. “But Russia is waging a war by supporting those forces that it believes are working alone against the consensus in Europe.”
As investigations progress, the scope of Russia’s political meddling efforts grows larger, but not clearer, at least for now, according to Havlicek. “We don’t have the full picture yet,” he says. “We have individual pieces of information, but since investigations are mostly conducted nationally, it will take some time to grasp the full extent.”
Some, including the Czech prime minister, have called on EU bodies to get directly involved in unravelling Moscow’s “sprawling hydra”, and for EU member states to coordinate closely. Yet counterintelligence remains a closely-guarded domestic prerogative, and fears of leaks from the EU’s more Russia-friendly governments – including Hungary and Slovakia – may also be a reason to act with caution.
According to Havlicek, the fact that Voice of Europe was allowed to operate in such a way points to some serious failings that need to be urgently addressed. “No one spotted this for a long time. We need to ask ourselves why this happened and, I hope, learn lessons,” he tells BIRN.
“The Czech side was not dutiful enough,” he adds, arguing that European governments’ current measures “are simply not good enough today” to face the threat that Russia poses to European security and its democracy.
