In response, Russia is deploying diplomats from the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Russia had declared 15 diplomats from the Netherlands, an unspecified number of diplomats from Belgium and four diplomats from Austria “persona non grata” in a tit-for-tat response.

The ministry said in separate statements that the ambassadors of the three countries were summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday in protest of their decision to declare dozens of Russian diplomats working in these countries “persona non grata”.

Xinhua News Agency reported that Dutch diplomats should leave Russia within two weeks, Belgian diplomats were also ordered to leave before the end of the day on May 3, while Austrian diplomats should leave Russia before the end of April 24.

The ministry also summoned Luxembourg’s ambassador and said Moscow “reserves the right to retaliate” over Luxembourg’s expulsion of a Russian embassy employee.

According to media reports, the Belgian Foreign Ministry said 12 Belgian diplomats had been ordered to leave Russia.

– yan

int / sks / dpb

(Only the title and image of this report may have been reformulated by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a shared feed.)

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