The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that in response to the confrontational actions of Helsinki, nine Finnish diplomats were expelled. In addition, from October 1, consent to the activities of the Consulate General of Finland in St. Petersburg is withdrawn, said on the department’s website.
“It has been noted that the parameters of Finland’s NATO membership, which are currently under discussion, constitute a threat to the security of the Russian Federation, and encourage the Kiev regime to go to war and to pump it with Western weapons clearly means hostile actions against our country,” the Foreign Ministry noted.
The department also stressed that such a line from the Finnish authorities “cannot go unanswered.”
The decision to expel Finnish diplomats was taken in response to the June expulsion of nine Russian diplomats from Finland. Helsinki then said they would have been engaged in intelligence activities.
As explained to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the response to the conflicting actions of the Finnish authorities, Moscow has decided to withdraw from October 1 its consent to the activities of the Consulate General of Finland in Saint Petersburg.
“The Finnish side has received the corresponding diplomatic notes from the Russian Foreign Ministry,” the message read.
In mid-May, the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper wrote that Moscow had frozen the accounts of Finnish diplomatic missions in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Finland considered that Moscow had thereby violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, informed RBC with reference to the Finnish Embassy in Russia. This is a statement by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. appointed “absurd”. According to her, Moscow’s actions “are a mirror response to similar restrictions on Russian foreign missions” in Finland. At the beginning of April, Finland officially joined NATO. At the Russian Foreign Ministry then promised take retaliatory measures “both military-technical and of a different nature”. The ministry also said Finland’s NATO membership “can only have a negative impact” on Russian-Finnish relations.
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