Aerial images of the pro-Kremlin Night Wolves bikers' newly opened "European branch" in Dolna Krupa in Slovakia showing military equipment including tanks and armed personnel carriers finally pushed some Slovak authorities into action. On Tuesday, the Slovak Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that authorities would have to monitor and evaluate the bikers' activities on Slovak soil as diplomats "consider the opinions of some of its members harmful". Established in 1989, shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union, they have nationalist views and some members have also fought side by side with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, according to AFP press agency. Slovak press reported that the controversial paramilitary group "Slovensky branci" uses the facility to train for combat and the chief of the Night Wolves branch in Slovakia Jozef Hambálek says he is well connected politically including to former Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák. He says he plans to open a museum there, which is the reason for the presence of military equipment.
Slovak police reacted to the aerial images by saying that the military vehicles present there were vintage machines scheduled to be shown to the public in autumn. Some of the equipment is owned by a civic association that is a member of a group called Voluntary Firefighter Protection of the Slovak Republic. "For a full disclosure, the association is also active in modernising obsolete military equipment into fully functional firefighting equipment; for instance, related to transporting emergency teams during emergencies," stated Michal Slivka , a spokesman for the Slovak police. The Slovak intelligence service knows about the military machinery but cannot reveal more.
Part of the machinery allegedly comes from the Ministry of Defence, namely from the Institute of Military History, that belongs to the ministry. "Despite the equipment being museum pieces, therefore non-functional, the minister ordered an immediate termination of the contract with the civic association linked to that facility and asked for the return of the machinery," said the spokesperson of the ministry, Danka Capáková. The equipment arrived at the Dolna Krupa facility under the rental contract signed by the civic association The Museum of Historical Vehicles Trnava, whose executive director is the owner of the premises and the president of Night Wolves Europe, Jozef Hambálek.
