A day after the federal government of the Czech Republic blamed operatives from Russia’s army intelligence company for a sequence of mysterious explosions at an ammunition depot in 2014 and expelled 18 Russian diplomats, the Russian authorities introduced on Sunday that 20 Czech diplomats can be ejected in response.

The expulsions sign additional escalation of tensions between the Kremlin and western governments, reaching an depth not seen for the reason that Cold War. The spat between the Czech Republic and Russia comes simply days after the United States imposed heavy sanctions on Russian authorities officers and companies in response to a large-scale hacking of American authorities laptop techniques.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry known as the Czech accusations “absurd” and accused the federal government of being an American puppet.

“In an effort to please the U.S.A. following recent American sanctions against Russia, the Czech government in this instance even exceeded its overseas masters,” the Russian Foreign Ministry assertion stated.

The expulsions will most probably decimate the Czech diplomatic presence in Russia, the place the Czechs keep solely a number of dozen diplomats.

By distinction, the Russian Embassy in Prague, the Czech capital, is believed to be one of many nation’s largest in Europe and is used, safety consultants say, as a staging space for intelligence operations carried out in plenty of Western nations.

The 2014 explosions, first within the village of Vlachovice after which, two months later, at a close-by ammunition depot, had been by no means absolutely defined, although on the time authorities raised the potential of sabotage. Two employees on the government-owned depot had been killed.

The blasts got here at a time when Ukrainian forces had been determined for weapons to beat again features made by Russian-backed separatists, as effectively as when Russian forces had been deepening their involvement within the Syrian civil conflict.

On Saturday, the Czech prime minister, Andrej Babis, introduced {that a} subsection of Russia’s army intelligence company identified as Unit 29155 was liable for the explosions.

The unit, which has operated for greater than a decade, has been tied to plenty of violent actions round Europe, together with an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016 and the poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian spy, within the United Kingdom two years later.

The British authorities charged in absentia two operatives from Unit 29155 with finishing up the poisoning.

On Saturday, the Czech authorities stated that these two operatives, identified by their aliases, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, had been within the Czech Republic within the days main as much as, and together with, the primary explosion in October 2014. In an announcement, the organized-crime unit of the Czech nationwide police stated that the 2 males had been needed in reference to an unspecified “serious crime.”