Operation: Blast

Two warehouses exploded, two people were killed, and over a thousand local residents were forced to leave their homes. According to the police, agents of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU were behind the explosions.

Ten years have passed since the most extensive espionage operation on Czech soil in October 2014. Investigative journalist Artur Janoušek, together with Vojtěch Koval, returned to the site of the disaster to explore how the residents of nearby villages perceived the events with the benefit of hindsight and to reconstruct how both the police and Janoušek himself investigated what had really happened.

Although much of the story is told in retrospect, new information has come to light—along with testimonies from people who had remained silent until now. Among them is a firefighter who saved dozens of lives with his quick response during the initial intervention and an investigator whose meticulous work—and a bit of luck—led to uncovering who was truly behind the blasts.

Operation: Explosion is built not only on facts and the thorough work of the Radiožurnál investigative team but, above all, on human stories and testimonies. It allows, for the first time, a complete retelling of the Vrbětice explosions, from the first blast to the present day.

To tell the full story, we also included additional interviews and video interviews — with the mentioned fire brigade commander as well as politicians, including both the current and former president. One specific video (featuring Miloš Zeman) reached 76,000 views on YouTube. Overall, the podcast has so far gathered 170,000 downloads, and the accompanying articles on the iRozhlas.cz website also performed very well. For example, an article telling the story of a thief who stole damaged machine guns from the exploded site garnered over 45,000 pageviews and several thousand audio plays.

The feedback we received mostly praised the comprehensive coverage of the case, which has several layers that people often couldn’t perceive as connected over time. We received particularly positive responses to the episode about possible collaborators of Russian agents, where we also presented several pieces of information that weren’t widely known to the public.

We will be presenting the project at Prix Bohemia Radio!

When: Thursday 23^rd October 2025 | 13:15 – 13:35 | listening session
Where: Film hall, Arts Centre UP
Entrance: Free admission with accreditation

Look at the detailed program of the listening session.

All podcasts are available here.