With love to Alexei Navalny! Never give up!

From The Slovak Spectator, 3 October 2023: FOREIGN MINISTRY SUMMONS RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR OVER RUSSIA’S INTERFERENCE IN SLOVAK ELECTION:

Almost three weeks after the Slovak Foreign Ministry expelled a Russian diplomat and summoned Russian ambassador Igor Bratchikov, the ministry summoned Bratchikov again.

In its statement from October 2, the ministry writes that the reason is the statements made by Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia Sergey Naryshkin during the 48-hour election moratorium in Slovakia.

On September 28, Russia’s intelligence service published a press release on its website. Naryshkin accused the USA of interfering in the Slovak parliamentary election. The vote took place two days after the press release, on September 30.

“The upcoming elections in Slovakia can hardly be perceived as a democratic expression of the will of the people free from external influence,” the press release reads, claiming that the liberal party Progresívne Slovensko is expected to win and form a government loyal to Washington.

The Slovak election was won by the populist party Smer, led by former three-time PM Robert Fico.

[…]

The Slovak Foreign Ministry slammed the Russian intelligence service for questioning the integrity of free and democratic elections in Slovakia.

“We consider such deliberately disseminated disinformation to be inadmissible interference by the Russian Federation in the electoral process in Slovakia.”

The manipulation of election results is practically impossible in Slovakia. If, for example, a member of the electoral commission wanted to change the results, there are still nominees of other parties sitting in who can prevent them from doing so.

The Russian embassy in Bratislava, a notorious disseminator of disinformation and propaganda in Slovakia, denied the Slovak ministry’s allegation.

From Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty(RFERL), 14 September 2023: SLOVAKIA EXPELS RUSSIAN EMBASSY EMPLOYEE:

Slovakia said on September 14 it was expelling an employee of the Russian Embassy in Bratislava for activities in “direct violation” of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The Foreign Ministry said it summoned Russian Ambassador to Slovakia Igor Bratchikov and informed him that the employee, whose identity was not disclosed, must leave the country within 48 hours. No details were provided.

From The Slovak Spectator, 14 March 2022, SLOVAKIA EXPELS THREE RUSSIAN EMBASSY STAFFERS:

At least three people have been detained on suspicion of having spied for Russia in Slovakia.

The Denník N daily reported that since Friday, the police have been on an operation unprecedented in Slovakia’s history. The National Criminal Agency (NAKA) detained a lieutenant from the Defence Ministry, a member of the Slovak Information Service (SIS) and a person with ties to the Hlavné Správy disinformation website, which was taken down after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

At least one of the detained confessed to the crime, the daily wrote. An employee of the Russian Embassy reportedly bribed the detained persons. As a result, the Foreign Ministry has decided to expel three Russian Embassy staffers from Slovakia.

From The Slovak Spectator, 30 March 2022, SLOVAKIA WILL REDUCE STAFF AT THE RUSSIAN EMBASSY:

As many as 35 Russian diplomats will have to leave Slovakia, following a decision of the Foreign Affairs Ministry on the reduction of the embassy’s staff.

The Russian Ambassador to Slovakia Igor Bratchikov has already received a diplomatic note about this decision, the TASR newswire reported.

He was summoned to the ministry following the information of Slovakia’s security forces on the actions of another Russian diplomat at odds with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

[…]

“In this regard, we must say regretfully that after the previous expulsions of Russian diplomats in the past two years, the Russian diplomatic mission has not shown interest in proper work on our territory,” the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry said, as quoted by TASR.

[…]

Even though the official documents from last year show that officially there were 29 Russian diplomats plus nine partners, the Sme daily reported that there might be nearly 70 of them at the Russian Embassy in Bratislava.

From the Associated Press(AP), 7 October 2020, RUSSIAN ON TRIAL ACCUSED OF STATE-ORDERED BERLIN EXECUTION:

BERLIN (AP) — A Russian accused of killing a Georgian man in broad daylight in downtown Berlin on Moscow’s orders went on trial for murder Wednesday, in a case that has contributed to growing frictions between Germany and Russia.

The defendant Vadim Krasikov, using the alias Vadim Solokov, traveled to the German capital last August on the orders of the Russian government to kill a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity who fought Russian troops in Chechnya, prosecutor Ronald Georg said.

“State agencies of the central government of the Russian Federation gave the defendant the contract to liquidate the Georgian citizen with Chechen roots,” Georg told the court, reading the indictment.

“The defendant took the contract, either for an unknown sum of money or because he shared the motive of those who gave the contract to liquidate the (victim) as a political enemy in revenge for his role in the second Chechen war and participation in other armed conflict against the Russian Federation.”

[…]

After the Aug. 23, 2019 killing, Germany expelled two Russian diplomats last December over the case, prompting Russia to oust two German diplomats in retaliation.

If the allegations against the suspect are proved in court, the case has the potential to exacerbate tensions between Moscow and Berlin, which have also been fueled by allegations of Russian involvement in the 2015 hacking of the German parliament and the theft of documents from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own office, as well as the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny fell ill on a flight in Russia on Aug. 20, landing in a Siberian hospital. Two days later, he was transferred on Merkel’s personal invitation to Berlin’s Charite hospital, where doctors concluded he had been poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent.

Moscow has dismissed accusations of involvement in the Navalny case and denied ties in the parliamentary hacking, even though Merkel herself said there was “hard evidence” of the latter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has also called the allegations of Russian involvement in the Berlin killing “absolutely groundless.”

After Merkel confronted Putin about the killing at a meeting in Paris in December, the Russian leader called the victim, Zelimkhan “Tornike” Khangoshvili, a “bandit” and a “murderer,” accusing him of killing scores of people during fighting in the Caucasus.

The growing acrimony between the two countries comes at a delicate time, as Germany and Russia work towards the completion of a joint pipeline project to bring Russian gas directly to Germany under the Baltic, and work to try and salvage a nuclear deal with Iran that has been unraveling since President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of it in 2018.

Khangoshvili, 40, was a Georgian citizen of Chechen ethnicity who fought Russian troops in Chechnya. He had also volunteered to fight for a Georgian unit against the Russians in South Ossetia in 2008, but peace was negotiated before he took part. He had previously survived multiple assassination attempts and continued to receive threats after fleeing in 2016 to Germany, where he had been granted asylum.