Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Glushko yesterday received copies of the diplomatic credentials of the new Czech ambassador to Moscow, Daniel Kostoval, according to the Russian news agency TASS, citing a Russian diplomatic statement about the meeting.
The post of the head of the Czech embassy in Moscow has been vacant since last May, although the previous ambassador, Vitezslav Pivonka, returned to Prague at the end of 2022, and the office was actually led by charge d’affaires Jan Ondrejka, TASS reported.
Kostoval has served at the Foreign Ministry since 1996 as director of the department of security policy, director of the department of Northern and Eastern Europe, and director general for non-European Countries. From 1998 to 2002, he served on the Permanent Delegation of the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). He was already at the Czech embassy in Moscow from 2003 to 2006, and then at the embassy in Washington.
In 2013, he became the first deputy defence minister. Subsequently, he was deputy defence minister for strategy, foreign relations and planning until the end of 2018, and then deputy minister in charge of armaments and acquisitions.
The Czech Republic has had strained diplomatic relations with Russia since 2021, following the discovery by the Czech intelligence services and investigators that Russian intelligence agents were involved in the 2014 explosions at ammunition depots in Vrbetice in the Zlin Region. Mutual expulsions of diplomats followed, which continued after the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
The Czech Republic also withdrew its consent to the operation of Russia’s consulates in Brno and Karlovy Vary, and closed its consulates in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. The Czech House in Moscow is temporarily closed as well.
In an interview published by the Russian magazine Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn in June, the Russian ambassador to the Czech Republic, Alexander Zmeyevsky, described the level of Russian-Czech bilateral relations as almost zero. The diplomat also said he had hoped that the arrival of the new Czech ambassador to Moscow would have a positive effect on communication between the diplomatic services of the two countries.
Kostoval told reporters in early May that he considered his main goal to be understanding Russia’s interests and intentions towards the Czech Republic, and transferring that information for the Czech government to be able to make decisions based on facts. In Moscow, he wants to defend Czech interests above all, and is ready for a diplomatic dialogue with Russian partners, he added.
