Photo: vlada.gov.cz
CZECH REPUBLIC - PRAGUE, 14 June 2024 - Prime Minister Petr Fiala spoke at the beginning of an extraordinary session of the Chamber of Deputies to provide more information on the terrorist act of setting fire to buses at the Prague depot. He said that on Thursday, 6 June 2024, before 2 a.m., the buses of the Prague City Transport Company parked at the Prague Klíčov depot were set on fire. Three buses were damaged by this fire. There was no major damage, mainly because the fire was extinguished in time by the Transport Company's staff, and there were no injuries or danger to the health of persons.
"The possibility that Russian intelligence services were involved in this attack is now being intensively investigated, just as they were in sabotage in connection with other fires in Europe, for example in Warsaw. On the basis of all this, measures were already taken during Saturday evening, namely measures against or in relation to infrastructure and places with a high concentration of people, especially in the territory of the capital city of Prague. These measures were purely preventive in nature, as the security forces consider that we have managed to avert the immediate threat by detaining the suspect and taking other steps. However, the intelligence services have also been activated and are actively cooperating with the police, sharing information and, last but not least, all intelligence or security services are also in contact with our foreign partners, with their foreign partners. It appears, and the probability is unfortunately very high, that Russian hybrid attacks on European countries are no longer just about influencing public opinion and attacking IT infrastructure, but also physical objects. After all, this is not the first time something like this has happened in the Czech Republic. The police and other forces are intensively dealing with the situation and will continue to do so. Together with the intelligence services, they are continuously assessing the security situation on our territory, including the international context and the impact of events on the international scene," the Prime Minister said.
Prime Minister Fiala was followed by Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, who supplemented this information with the international context and said, among other things:
"I would like to say that the risks and threats we have faced in recent years cannot come as a surprise to us and we regularly warn and challenge them. And, of course, the situation where Russia has unleashed the biggest war on the European continent since the end of the Second World War unfortunately means that things are happening that perhaps we could not have imagined before. That fundamental source of danger is Russia and, at its core, its aggressive imperialism."
And he gave a concrete example of the initiative of the Czech Government, which this week sent a letter to Brussels signed by the Danish, Dutch, Polish, Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian and Czech foreign ministers proposing that the movement of Russian diplomats and their family members in the Schengen area be restricted, because two and a half years after the war began, Schengen is still being made available to Russian diplomats in a completely illogical and unnecessary way.
"This means that the Czech Republic has a whole series of initiatives to increase the security of the Czech Republic, to increase the ability of our services to counter these activities. It was the sanctions law that was passed in the Chamber of Deputies, thank you for the fact that it was passed expressly, we put the Voice of Europe entity, the two persons who operated it, on the sanctions lists, and at the same time we pushed for the sanctions to apply throughout the European Union. This is to the credit of the Czech Republic, and of course it again increases the security of our country. In the same way, we have frozen the Russian Federation's assets that they have here and are not used for diplomatic purposes."
Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan then took the floor and also added to the list of systemic measures not only in the Czech Republic but also within the European Union, for example, during the recent World Ice Hockey Championships in Prague and Ostrava or during the upcoming Olympic Games in France. And he literally said:
"The Police of the Czech Republic, together with intelligence services, regularly and continuously assess the security (risk?) in the Czech Republic, of course taking into account the international context and what is happening beyond our borders. We have responded adequately to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli territory, and also to sporting events, whether it is the World Cup in the Czech Republic, the Euro football tournament in Germany, or the Olympics in Paris."
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