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Moscow shows seven EU diplomats because they showed solidarity with the Czech Republic in a dispute with Russia.

As the Foreign Ministry announced in Moscow on Wednesday, four diplomats from the Baltic states and three others from Slovakia were expelled from the country.

A fierce dispute over an intelligence affair is currently smoldering between the Czech Republic and Russia, which is why Prague and Moscow have already expelled numerous diplomats from the opposite side.

In solidarity with the government in Prague, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had for their part expelled Russian diplomats, and the governments in Hungary, Poland and Slovakia also backed Prague.

The Czech secret service had accused Russia of being behind two explosions in a military depot in the east of the Czech Republic, in which two people were killed in 2014.

According to this, two Russian secret service employees are said to have triggered the explosions.

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They are said to be the same agents who were charged with poisoning former double agent Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, UK in 2018.

The allegations led to a rift between Prague and Moscow and to the mutual expulsion of the diplomats.

According to media reports, the 2014 explosions were aimed at weapons owned by a Bulgarian arms dealer, which might be sold to Ukraine. 

In 2014 Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, while the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army escalated in eastern Ukraine.