Russian citizens with passports in the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were in Prague at the same time with Sergey Skripale in October 2014, Czech Radio reports.

The alleged GRU officers, known under the names Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, began to monitor the former double agent Sergey Skripal no later than 3.5 years before he was poisoned.. As Czech Radio reports on Wednesday, October 10, citing intelligence sources, Boshirov and Petrov arrived in the Czech Republic under cover of October 2014 - at the same time Skripal, who planned to meet with Czech officers, whom he helped in disclosing the country alleged Russian spies.

According to this information, a person with a passport in the name of Alexander Petrov from October 13 to 16 lived in a hotel in the city of Ostrava in the east of the Czech Republic, after which he arrived in Prague. The second alleged violator poisoner, Ruslan Boshirov arrived in Prague on October 11.

The Czech special services, as well as the National Center for Combating Organized Crime (NCOZ), were interested in their visit to the Czech Republic, as it was related to a certain investigation conducted throughout Europe, the radio reports, without giving details. Skripal himself came to the Czech Republic in the second half of October 2014..

At the request of journalists, the Security and Information Service of the Czech Republic (BIS) stated that they did not comment on this kind of information.. The embassy of the Russian Federation in the Czech Republic said they did not deal with issues relating to the crossing of Czech borders by foreign citizens.

Source: DW.