Eduardo González
The Government is going to expel around 27 diplomats and employees of the Russian Embassy in Madrid because they represent “a threat to the security” of Spain and in retaliation for “the terrible actions” perpetrated by Vladimir Putin’s military forces in the Ukrainian towns of Bucha and Mariúpol.
This was announced yesterday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, at the press conference following the Council of Ministers. “This morning we have decided the expulsion from Spain of Russian diplomats and staff of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Spain because they represent a threat to the security interests of our country and after the terrible actions of the last days carried out in Ukraine, especially in Bucha and the one we are receiving today from Mariupol,” said the minister, who yesterday began “a round of contacts with the parliamentary groups to give them all the details of this decision and seek their support for it.”
“We are finalizing the list at the moment, but it will be more or less around 25 people, maybe some more people,” the minister continued. Pending the finalization of the dates, he announced, the diplomats and Embassy employees on the list will have to leave Spain in a “few days”. Foreign Ministry sources consulted by The Diplomat did not specify who will make up the list.
In any case, according to Albares, Ambassador Yuri Korchagin will not be among those to be expelled. “The ambassador is not included because we want to give dialogue a chance, as we have done since the beginning of the crisis, since long before the illegal aggression took place,” he explained. “We want to keep the figure of the ambassador here and our ambassador in Moscow (Marcos Gómez Martínez) as well because we do not lose hope that Putin’s war will end and return to diplomatic channels and dialogue, which are the only ones that both the EU and our transatlantic allies have always wanted and kept open,” he assured.
According to Albares, the decision to expel the diplomats “is part of a process that is taking place at the European level and which has already been joined by Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, Ireland, Netherlands and in the last hours, as well as Spain, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy and also the External Action Service of the European Union, led by the Spanish Josep Borrell, the High Representative”, the minister continued. Germany has expelled 40 Russian diplomats, France 30, as has Italy, and Denmark 15. Borrell also announced yesterday the expulsion of “several” Russian diplomats as part of the EU’s new package of measures to curb Russia’s “war machine”.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said yesterday that “all such decisions will have a corresponding response.” In this regard, Albares stated at the press conference that “the Russian response is known only to Russia,” but, “so far, what Russia has done is to respond with exact symmetry, that is, the same number of people being expelled by each of the European partners with exactly the same diplomatic status, because diplomatic usages tend to make this so.” “What is not symmetrical are the motives, if such expulsion of Spanish diplomats occurs,” he warned.
Albares did not want to “speculate” on the exact reasons why these people are going to be expelled and limited himself to clarify that, the objective of this measure, is to respond to “the unbearable images we have seen of the massacre of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha after the withdrawal of the Russian army”. “We are deeply outraged and Spain demands that war crimes be investigated immediately and that those responsible be punished for it,” he added. Spain – which is among the nearly forty countries that have requested the intervention of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court – “will continue to support Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression that literally knows no limits,” the minister assured a few hours before the appearance of the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelenski, before the Congress.
