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| - A fatal explosion at a Czech arms depot, the poisoning of a Bulgarian arms dealer and a nerve agent attack in Britain -- all supposedly orchestrated by Russian military intelligence. These are the three main strands of an investigation in Prague that has led to a diplomatic crisis between Czech Republic and Russia, which denies all the allegations. According to police and investigative reporting by the website Bellingcat, the Czech weekly Respekt and others, some of the same agents were involved in at least two of the three covert operations. Here is what we know and what has been reported so far: On October 16, a depot with 58 tons of ammunition near the village of Vrbetice in eastern Czech Republic explodes. The remains of two employees are recovered over a month later. On December 3, there is another non-fatal explosion at a second arms depot nearby with 98 tons of ammunition. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis on Monday said that the ammunition belonged to a Bulgarian arms dealer and was probably destined for "entities fighting against Russia". The arms dealer has been named in the media as Emilian Gebrev. The Czech weekly Respekt said the intended client may have been the government of Ukraine, which at the time was fighting off the start of a Moscow-backed rebellion in the country's east. But Gebrev's company Emco has said that "the allegations they were destined for Ukraine are not true". Czech police have identified two Russians as being behind the explosions -- Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga, saying they travelled to Czech Republic under false identities days before the first blast, presenting themselves as arms dealers. The same two men, using the same false identities, are suspected by British police of being behind the attempted murder using a nerve agent called Novichok of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter nearly four years later. Respekt said a total of six agents from Russia's GRU agency are suspected of being involved in the blasts, including the head of the agency's 29155 unit responsible for foreign operations. It said the presence of unit chief Andrei Averyanov in the Czech Republic when it happened showed the importance of the operation. AFP was not able to verify this information independently. On April 28, Gebrev collapses after a reception at an upscale restaurant in the Bulgarian capital Sofia and falls into a coma with symptoms of severe poisoning. His son and one of his company executives are treated with similar symptoms. Three Russians have been charged in absentia for the poisonings. Bellingcat has reported that one of them was a high-ranking Russian military intelligence officer, Denis Sergeev, and said he was also the unnamed third suspect in the later Skripal poisoning. Bellingcat said Sergeev travelled from Sofia to Istanbul and then on to Moscow in the evening of the day Gebrev was poisoned. Gebrev has said he believes Novichok was used against him. On March 4, Skripal and his daughter Yulia are found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury in southwest England. On March 12, with the Skripals still in critical condition, the then prime minister Theresa May identifies the poison as the highly toxic Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. On July 8, local resident Dawn Sturgess dies after being exposed to the same Novichok used against the Skripals through a perfume bottle that her partner had found discarded in Salisbury. The crimes plunge already tense relations between Russia and the West to their worst level since the end of the Cold War, with hundreds of diplomats expelled on both sides. On September 13, the two men identified by British police as the perpetrators of the attack go on Russian state television to say they were only visiting England as tourists. burs-dt/mas/pvh
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