Kremlin�s increase in spying condemned by security servicesBy Gabriel Ronay
AS Czechs last week sombrely remembered the 70th anniversary of the Munich Agreement, when Britain and France abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler to secure "peace in our time", a present-day power threat against the integrity of the Czech state was made public.
Vojenska Rozvedka (VZ), the Czech military counter-intelligence, marked September 30, the day of the signing of the shameful Munich treaty in 1938, by exposing the extent of present-day Russian spy penetration endangering the Czech Republic's integrity and security. In its annual report, VZ detailed "the concrete interest of Russian spies to recruit Czechs with access to classified information about the US missile shield in the country and the state-of-the-art Nato technology behind it".
The signing of the US-Czech radar base accord in July roused an angry reaction in Moscow. The Kremlin rejected America's insistence that the anti-missile shield would be a defence against rogue states, like Iran and North Korea, and claimed that it was directly threatening the Russian Federation.
BIS, the domestic Czech security information service's counter- intelligence arm, was even sharper in its denouncing of the subversive activities of Russia's emboldened spies in the Czech Republic. In its annual report, released last week, it said: "Russian intelligence activity in the Czech Republic has reached an exceptionally high intensity." Russia's spies, it went on, were pursuing the Kremlin's strategic goal of trying to isolate the United State and weaken Nato.
It said: "In the past year, Russian agents were attempting to infiltrate, contact and influence civic groups, politicians and the media in order to spur opposition to the siting of the US anti-missile radar base in the Czech Republic."
BIS spokesman Jan Subert said on Czech television: "In 2007, Russian spies were especially trying to infiltrate protest groups, non-governmental organisations and the media with a view to setting Czech public opinion against the US radar base on Czech soil.
"In the service's view, the active Russian measures against the Czech Republic and its allies were probably part of a broader, long-term Russian campaign focused on harming the European Union and Nato, isolating the United States and re-establishing control over the lost Soviet security perimeter in Europe."
Martin Bartak, the deputy defence minister, said that the American radar base, to be built at Brdy, 90km southwest of Prague, has triggered "fever-pitch activities" among foreign spies. "The military counter-intelligence, VZ, has information about the espionage activities of not only Russian but other foreign spy agencies too. Their problem, is how far can they go?" he remarked cryptically.
Following the Russian invasion of Georgia in August, Moscow's relations with the West have become increasingly strained. But the massive scale of a great power's attack on a small country, allegedly to protect the Russian minority in South Ossetia, has aroused especially strong reaction in the Czech Republic.
Historical parallels with contemporary political events are not always apt, but Hitler's blatant use in 1938 of "Germany's fear" for the survival of the ethnic German population of Sudetenland was a similar action against a small central European country with continent-wide repercussions.
On September 30, 1938, Neville Chamberlain, Britain's prime minister, and Eduard Daladier, his French counterpart, signed the ignominious Munich Agreement appeasing Hitler by ceding Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland region to Nazi Germany. This "strategic appeasement" destroyed democratic Czechoslovakia and brought the second world war even closer.
On this 70th anniversary of the country's painful betrayal by its allies, the Czech Republic's concern over the activities of another bullying power is understandable. However, Nazi Germany in the 1930s and Russia's present assertiveness in its former bailiwick could hardly be equated. Nonetheless, Moscow's shameless use of "Russia's fear" for the Russian ethnic minority in South Ossetia to teach Georgia the price of applying for Nato membership smacks of old-style imperialist gunboat action.
The Czechs have noted this - and also the threat posed by Moscow's spies to their country's democratic fabric. But unlike in 1938, and after the Soviet-led invasion in 1968, the Czech response is a firm "No" to appeasement. Prague seems quite determined to stand up to the rampant Russian bear.
It is ironic that, having stood up to Russia's sabre-rattling, the current financial crisis afflicting the US might now delay the building of the anti-missile shield.
