Western countries have expelled 574 Russian diplomatic staff since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia’s official agency TASS reported Thursday.
The expulsions had various pretexts, both related to the situation in Ukraine and on charges of carrying out activities inappropriate for a diplomat,” said TASS.
This is the largest series of expulsions, five times more than the 2018 case of the poisoning of former Russian agent Serguei Skripal in the United Kingdom, which led to the removal of 123 Russian diplomats in several countries.
According to TASS data, Bulgaria was the country that expelled the most Russian diplomats since a year ago: 83, according to data from the Russian service.
Of the rest, Poland (45 expulsions), Germany (40), Slovakia and France (35 each), Slovenia (33), Italy (30), United States (28) and the European Union (19) stand out.
Portugal, which supports Ukraine in its war with Russia, has expelled 10 Russian embassy employees for activities “contrary to national security,” a foreign ministry statement said on April 5, 2022.
The measure was met on May 19 with the expulsion of five employees of the Portuguese embassy in Moscow.
Portugal rejected the Russian government’s decision, as it had no justification other than “simple retaliation”.
“Unlike the Russian officials expelled from Portugal, these national officials carried out strictly diplomatic activities, in absolute accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” the Portuguese government argued.
Bulgaria was also the country to expel the largest number of Russian diplomatic officials at once in June last year, 70, according to TASS.
These measures “unfriendly to Russian diplomats”, according to the Russian agency, were taken by 29 European countries, the United States and Japan.
After the “special military operation”, as the invasion is officially referred to by Russia, the three Baltic countries, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, reduced the level of diplomatic representation from ambassador to envoy.
On February 24, two days after the invasion, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky announced the severance of diplomatic relations with Russia.
The Russian consulates in Bulgaria (Ruse), Latvia (Liepaja and Daugavpils), Lithuania (Klaipeda) and Estonia (Narva and the office in Tartu) were also closed.
The largest expulsion of diplomatic personnel occurred in 1971, when the United Kingdom ordered the immediate return to Moscow of 105 embassy employees of the then-Soviet Union for espionage, TASS added.
The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations regulates the exercise of diplomatic representation, including the immunity of officials, the immunity of correspondence or the tax exemption of diplomatic representations.
Article 9 of the Convention provides that a State may “at any time, without being obliged to justify its decision”, notify another State that “the Head of Mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the Mission persona non grata or that another member of the mission staff is not acceptable”.
This decision can be made even before the visa arrives in the territory of the state where he is supposed to perform diplomatic functions.
The Vienna Convention came into force in Portugal by Decree-Law No. 48295 of March 27, 1968, promulgated by the then President of the Republic, Américo Thomaz.
Source: DN
