Rudolf Jindrák approved as special envoy for talks with Russia

The head of the Foreign Department of the Office of the President , Rudolf Jindrák, has been approved as the government‘s special envoy for talks with Russia aimed at reducing tension in bilateral relations. Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček said on Monday that he expected the negotiations to cover a wide spectrum of issues, not just the sore points in bilateral relations.

Czech-Russian relations have been increasingly strained in recent months by a the row over the statue of Soviet marshal Ivan Konev, a bogus information plot in which the Czech counter-intelligence service BIS was fed information that a Russian agent had been sent to Prague to kill elected Prague officials and the subsequent mutual expulsion of diplomats.