Russia expels 85 European diplomats in retaliatory move after spying claims
▶ Hundreds of Russian embassy employees have been ordered to leave since start of Ukraine invasion
Russia yesterday expelled 85 French, Italian and Spanish diplomats in retaliation for the removal of Moscow’s diplomats from European countries over the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry made the announcement after summoning France’s ambassador, Pierre Levy, and telling him that the expulsion of 41 employees of Russian diplomatic missions was a “provocative and unfounded decision”.
The diplomats have two weeks to leave.
The three countries are among European nations that have collectively thrown out more than 300 Russians since the February 24 invasion. In many cases, they accused Russian diplomats of spying, something Moscow has denied.
Russia’s response has included sending home 45 Polish staff and 40 Germans last month. It has also announced retaliatory moves against Finland, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Japan, among others.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi condemned the expulsions as a “hostile act”, but said diplomatic channels must remain open “because it’s through those channels that, if possible, peace [in Ukraine] will be achieved”.
The French Foreign Ministry said it strongly condemned the expulsion of its diplomats by Russia. It said the step had “no legitimate basis”.
It said the work of French diplomats in Russia “takes place fully within the framework of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic and consular relations” – whereas Paris expelled Russian staff in April on suspicion of being spies.
Meanwhile, Russia has said it will call a previously unnamed area in front of the American embassy in Moscow “Donbas Defenders Square”.
The name refers to a majority Russian-speaking region in eastern Ukraine that Russia says it is liberating as part of its military campaign.
In February 2018, a street outside the Russian embassy in Washington was named after Boris Nemtsov, an opposition politician who was shot dead outside the Kremlin in 2015.
Earlier yesterday, Finland and Sweden formally applied to join the Nato alliance.
Accession is expected to take only a few weeks, although the process has yet to start after Turkey objections over the Nordic countries’ alleged support for Kurdish militants that Ankara regards as terrorists.
Meanwhile, a Russian soldier accused of war crimes in Ukraine pleaded guilty yesterday to killing an elderly unarmed civilian.
Vadim Shishimarin, 21, a Russian tank commander, entered his plea in a Kyiv district court hearing its first war crimes trial against a Russian soldier who took part in the invasion.
He is charged with murdering a 62-year-old man in the north-eastern Ukrainian village of Chupakhivka.
He faces life imprisonment. Ukraine has accused Russian forces of atrocities during the invasion, and said it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes.
The Russian authorities said about 1,000 Ukrainian fighters, 80 of them wounded, surrendered this week from the bunkers and tunnels below the Azovstal steelworks in the besieged city of Mariupol.
Concerns grew for the welfare of the fighters, many of them members of the Azov Battalion.
Many boarded buses and were escorted by Russian armoured vehicles to the Russian-held
town of Novoazovsk, where Moscow said wounded fighters would be treated.
They will be questioned by a Russian committee investigating what Moscow has called “Ukrainian regime crimes”, the Tass news agency reported.
“Over the past 24 hours, 694 militants surrendered, including 29 wounded,” the ministry said.
“In total, since May 16, 959 militants surrendered, including 80 wounded.”