Austria has ordered the expulsion of four Russian diplomats for behavior they said was incompatible with the Austrian diplomatic status, according to a spokeswoman, for Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Schallenberg.
The three diplomats working at Russia’s embassy in Vienna and a Russian consulate based in Salzburg must leave Austria by Tuesday, the foreign minister’s spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The move came after a group of European Union countries took similar action this week, but unlike most of them, Austria did not say the expulsions were because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and Romania are among the EU countries that have announced this week they are expelling Russian diplomats over the war in Ukraine.
The moves came shortly after images of what appeared to be civilian bodies strewn in the streets of the Ukrainian town of Bucha caused international outrage.
While some EU countries have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, Austria is declaring “personae non-gratae” only a tiny fraction of the Russian diplomats based on its soil.
Austria hosts an unusually large contingent of Russian diplomats because Vienna is home to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and to a United Nations center that includes UN agencies such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
0
0
