The head of the Czech secret service has pointed the finger at Moscow for hoax bomb threats that forced hundreds of schools to shut for days.
The Czech secret service has blamed Russia for a series of bomb threats against schools in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, placing more pressure on already strained ties between Prague and Moscow.
Hundreds of Czech and Slovak schools were forced to close for several days in early September due to unprecedented bomb threats via email, according to local media. Nothing came of the threats and no evidence of explosives was found near the schools.
The head of the Czech Republic’s secret service, Michal Koudelka, warned the country’s parliament on Monday about cyber attacks against Czech entities.
“For example, the threatening emails in September about the placement of explosives targeting a number of schools in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, behind which there is also a clearly visible Russian trace,” Koudelka said.
“We are witnessing a kind of globalisation of evil, where the countries of the axis of evil — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — support, complement and help each other achieve their goals. We are therefore witnessing a phenomenon that is very serious and dangerous,” he added.
In May, the EU and NATO denounced Moscow for launching cyber attacks against Germany and the Czech Republic. The Czech foreign ministry said that some state institutions were targeted via a “previously unknown vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook”.
The Czech Republic is a NATO member and has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Yet relations between Prague and Moscow were already tense before the war in Ukraine, with the Czech Republic having blamed Russia for the 2014 explosion of an ammunition warehouse in the town of Vrbětice, which killed two people.
The Czech government said it found evidence of Moscow’s involvement in 2021, and expelled dozens of Russian diplomats while demanding compensation from the Kremlin.
Russia denied the accusations, and put the Czech Republic on its list of “unfriendly nations” as a result of the diplomatic spat.
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