The expulsions of Russian diplomats by European countries are a “demonstrative position of the West”, which is thus trying to punish Russia politically, Maria Zakharova believes
Maria Zakharova
A series of expulsions of Russian diplomats from Western countries is an attempt by the collective West to punish Russia politically, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the TV channel “Russia 1”. She posted the video on her Telegram channel.
She noted that countries justify the expulsion of Russian diplomats in different ways, “someone says that they are expelling diplomats for activities incompatible with the declared”, “somewhere they immediately talk about the political component.”
«We are well aware that <..."this is a demonstrative position of the collective West, accusing us of creating a crisis, trying to punish us politically in this way," Zakharova said,
According to her, this is done so that Russia could not be represented by its voice in these countries, neither by political contacts, nor by an information position, and could not repel information and political attacks.
European countries began a series of expulsions of Russian diplomats after the start of the military operation in Ukraine. In March, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia resorted to such a measure. The authorities of some countries have accused employees of Russian diplomatic missions of violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Slovakia, Latvia and Estonia recognized three employees of Russian diplomatic agencies as non grata, Lithuania included four Russians in the list, North Macedonia – five, and Bulgaria – ten. In response, Russia decided to expel four Lithuanian diplomats and three people each from the embassies of Latvia and Estonia. To the decision of Northern Macedonia to expel five diplomatic workers, Zakharova replied that it was aimed at “scrapping bilateral relations” and assured that the Foreign Ministry would take retaliatory measures.
On March 23, Poland expelled 45 Russian diplomats and froze the accounts of the Russian embassy. As reported by the Ambassador in Warsaw Sergey Andreev, the local prosecutor’s office concluded that the money could go to the financing of terrorism. In response, Russia blocked the accounts of the Polish embassy in Moscow, he noted.
Later, Dutch Foreign Minister Vopke Hoekstra announced that 17 Russians would be expelled from the kingdom. He called them intelligence agents who are in the country under diplomatic cover.
On the same day, the Belgian authorities decided to expel 21 diplomats who work at the consulate in Antwerp and the embassy in Brussels, on charges of espionage. The head of the Irish Foreign Ministry, Simon Coveney, notified the Russian side of the expulsion of four people. The Czech Republic has decided to expel one employee of the embassy in Prague.
On April 1, Bulgaria announced its decision to expel the first secretary of the Russian embassy. The authorities suspected him of collecting information constituting a state secret and transferring it to another party. A criminal case was opened against the diplomat under the article on espionage. Before that, Sofia recognized two Russian diplomats as persona non grata and asked ten more employees of the diplomatic mission to leave the country.
Moscow has promised to respond to all unfriendly measures directed against its foreign institutions.
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