Germany expected to expel over 30 Russian diplomats

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, said she was planning to expel more than 30 Russian diplomats from Berlin.

German security services concluded that Russian diplomats might be using their immunity to recruit as informers Germans who work in politics, business, science, and the Armed Forces as agents or to conduct sabotage operations and disinformation campaigns, Ukrainska Pravda reports, citing Focus, a German news magazine.

Focus noted that the residences of Russian secret services, located at the Russian embassy in Berlin and several Russian consulates, are staffed better than during the Cold War, counting nearly 160 officers.

On 24 March, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia summoned the chargé d’affaires of the Russian embassy and presented a diplomatic note on declaring a member of the diplomatic staff of the embassy persona non grata.