Czechs ban Rosatom from nuclear tender, rule out Sputnik vaccine

PRAGUE: The Czech government said Monday it would eliminate Russia's Rosatom from a multi-billion-euro tender to build a new nuclear plant unit and would no longer consider buying Sputnik V vaccines.

The announcements follow tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats after Prague accused Russia's secret services of being behind a fatal explosion on Czech territory in 2014.

Russian atomic energy agency "Rosatom will not be addressed to submit documents for security assessment," Czech Industry and Trade Minister Karel Havlicek told reporters.

The decision leaves France's EdF, South Korea's KHNP and US-based Westinghouse in play for a contract to build the new unit at the southern Dukovany plant by 2036.

Eighteen Russian diplomats identified by Czech intelligence as spies left Prague for Moscow on Monday, while 20 Czech diplomats expelled by Russia in retaliation landed in Prague later in the day or set out for home by car.

Citing an intelligence report, the Czech government has said Russia's military secret service GRU orchestrated a 2014 explosion that killed two people, followed by another one the same year.

Czech police are seeking two men in connection with the blast, who British authorities also identified as suspects in the 2018 poisoning with the nerve agent Novichok of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

The Kremlin has dubbed the expulsion of its diplomats "provocative and unfriendly".

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell meanwhile said a meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers had "expressed solidarity" with Czech Republic.

As well as ruling Rosatom out of the nuclear tender, Foreign Minister Jan Hamacek said the Czech Republic would no longer consider buying the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19.

"The only way now is to rely on vaccines that have been approved by the European Medicines Agency," Hamacek said.