On 16 October 2014, the GRU, Russian military intelligence, was involved in the sabotage of a depot in the town of Vrbětice where 50 metric tons of ammunition was stored. The resulting explosion claimed two victims. Czech intelligence determined that GRU operatives Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the same individuals accused of the 2018 Skripal poisoning in the United Kingdom, were behind the operation. In April 2021, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš stated that there was “unequivocal evidence” of Russian involvement and the Czech government expelled 18 Russian diplomats. The expulsions constituted an exceptionally strong responses by an EU member state to a Russian kinetic operation and were followed by reciprocal diplomatic retaliation from Moscow.