The Diplomat
A group of sixteen Spaniards who worked at the Spanish Embassy in Moscow and who were expelled by the Russian authorities a week ago crossed the border with Latvia in the last few hours to take a plane from there to our country.
The news of the departure was reported by The Objective and confirmed by the Russian newspaper Izvezstia, which published on its website a video of the moment when the Spanish diplomatic vehicles left the Moscow Embassy building.
According to The Diplomat, not all of those expelled have used this route to leave Russian territory. Some 16 people were part of the group, many of them personnel with service passports who were included in the list of expelled people. As this website reported, Russia expelled 12 people with diplomatic passports and 15 with service passports, who are Spaniards living in the country when they were hired and are precisely those most affected by the expulsion, as in many cases they are married to Russians.
Apparently, the Spanish ambassador, Marcos Gómez, travelled with the group to the Latvian border to see the workers off and then returned to Moscow, where the embassy’s ‘number two’, Agustín Núñez, and the consul, Mabel Vicandi, who have not been included in the list of those expelled, are still staying.
Once on Latvian soil, the expellees made their way to Riga, from where they took a plane sent by the Spanish authorities to bring them back to Spain.
As The Diplomat reported, Spain authorised the arrival of a Russian plane to repatriate the 27 diplomats who were expelled by the Spanish government on 5 April, although the aircraft had to make a long detour to avoid crossing European airspace.
