The measure was taken in response to a similar measure taken by Madrid a month and a half ago and the Spanish diplomatic mission in Moscow is practically in the hands of local Russian personnel
As expected, Moscow has decided to respond to the expulsion of 27 employees of the Russian embassy in Spain, a decision adopted on April 5 by the department of Jose Manuel Albares, declaring the same number of Spanish diplomats persona non grata. Spanish Ambassador to Russia, Marcos Gómez Martínez, was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry this morning to receive official notice that X members of the Spanish diplomatic mission must leave Russia within seven days.
Spain, along with the rest of the European Union, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and other countries, has adopted two sets of sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and the Bucha massacre, the measures of which include the expulsion of Russian diplomats . Since then, Moscow has gradually responded in a reciprocal manner. There are already several states whose diplomats have had to leave Russia, two Finns were expelled from the country on Tuesday and 34 French people today, but the list of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs still contains countries waiting for the same determination.
On April 5, the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, María Zajárova, already warned that, after the expulsion of 27 Russian diplomats from Spanish soil, “all decisions of this type will receive a corresponding reaction”. Staff at the Spanish embassy in Moscow were aware that a response was likely to come from Russia and its announcement would be only a matter of time.
The result of the exceeding of evictions places Spain in a situation of clear inferiority vis-à-vis Russia. If Russia went from 49 diplomats to 22 diplomats after the deportations, Spain, with about 25 members in the legation so far, will have almost none from now on. The additional problem is that most of the technical staff of the Spanish embassy and consulate is made up of local Russian contractors, who are sometimes preferred when it comes to obtaining entry places compared to those of Spanish nationality.
Both Marcos Gómez Martínez and his counterpart, the Russian ambassador to Madrid, Yuri Korchaguin, will remain in their posts. However, the former will have very limited diplomatic activity, while Korchagin will have a much wider margin of action. The impact of the evictions in countries like Germany, France or Italy will be much less, as their number of diplomats in Russia is around a hundred, losing less than half of them.
The French ambassador to Russia, Pierre Levy, was also summoned today at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to be informed within a maximum period of two weeks of the expulsion of 34 French diplomats. Paris expelled 41 Russian diplomats last month. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website that France’s decision “has seriously damaged Franco-Russian relations and bilateral cooperation”.
More than 300 Russian diplomats were expelled from the United States and the European Union. In response, Moscow has expelled from its territory members of the representations of Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Poland, Finland and other countries, which Spain and France have joined today. Last month, against the background of the war in Ukraine and the atrocities in Bucha, the expulsion of Russian diplomats in Madrid was motivated because they “are a threat to the security of our country”.
Source: La Verdad
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