Czech police said Friday they were investigating a firebomb attack on a Russian cultural and scientific centre in Prague.
The Russian Centre for Science and Culture opened in 1971 when former Czechoslovakia was ruled by Moscow-steered communists.
“Since Thursday evening we have been probing an attack during which someone threw several Molotov cocktails at the Russian House,” police said on X.
Russian House head Igor Girenko said in a video message published by the Russian foreign ministry that “a terrorist attack was carried out against the Russian House in Prague”.
“Bottles with a flammable liquid were thrown at the building. Three of them exploded outside. Three of them were thrown inside and hit the library building (without exploding). Fortunately, no one was injured,” Girenko added.
An AFP photographer at the scene said the building’s windows were blackened with soot and one was broken.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova labelled the attack as a “barbaric act” in a comment to state-run TASS news agency.
“We regard this as a terrorist attack against our Rossotrudnichestvo centre, against Russian property,” added Pavel Shevtsov, deputy head of the Russian international cultural agency Rossotrudnichestvo, which runs the centre.
“It was a planned, deliberate attack,” he added.
Rossotrudnichestvo later said on social media that “the assailant fled before the emergency services arrived. It is not yet clear whether he acted alone or as part of a group. Investigators are collecting evidence and camera footage.”
Czech Interior Minister Lubomir Metnar said on X that “an attack on any building is unacceptable regardless of its character or ownership”.
The building seeks to promote Russian culture, history and language and is also frequented by Russians living in the Czech Republic.
Prague has declined to acknowledge it as a diplomatic building to Moscow’s dismay, suspecting the centre of spreading Russian propaganda.
Russia labelled the Czech Republic an “unfriendly” state in 2021, shortly before invading Ukraine in February 2022.
That year Czech intelligence accused Moscow of being behind a series of blasts in 2014 at an ammunition depot in the eastern Czech Republic which claimed two lives.
They occurred just months after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in early 2014.
Czech intelligence said the agents who had carried out the attack were also suspected of poisoning former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in 2018.
The announcement sparked a massive mutual expulsion of dozens of diplomats and other embassy staff.
Rossotrudnichestvo said that the Russian House “resumed its full programme of activities at the beginning of 2026".
“During this period, both the number of events and the number of visitors have multiplied. All events are exclusively cultural and educational in nature,” it added.
Girenko said a concert was scheduled to take place in the Russian House later on Friday, within Days of Russian Culture festival in the Czech Republic.
“We have not yet made a final decision as to whether we will cancel it or not. We are inclined to go ahead with it. To show our ill-wishers that we cannot be intimidated,” he added.
It is the second incendiary attack Czech police are dealing with in the past week. A group set fire to the warehouse of Czech arms company LPP, which is believed to cooperate with Israeli’s Elbit Systems, last Friday.
LPP denied the cooperation and police have since detained three people, who are Czech and American citizens.
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