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Russia will now regard the United States, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom as hostile countries.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced plans to publish a list of hostile countries on Monday. According to Maria Zakharova, representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the list was drawn up on the instructions of President Vladimir Putin.
By presidential decree, embassies of “hostile” states are prohibited from recruiting “natural persons on the territory of the Russian Federation”.
The government may change the composition of the hostile country list if necessary.
Russia announced the compilation of such a list after a series of countries sent Russian diplomats to show solidarity with the Czech Republic last Saturday, announced personae non gratae to 18 Russian diplomats who, according to the intelligence service, were agents of special services .
Summoned by the ambassador
On Tuesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia, who are due to appear the following day.
“Envoys from the Baltic states and Slovakia were summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday,” the ministry said.
On April 17, the Czech government accused the Russian military intelligence agency GRU of carrying out an explosion at a weapons depot in the east of the country in 2014 and announced the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats, whom it called spies. These actions sparked an angry diplomatic dispute with Moscow.
Last Tuesday, Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamaček asked the country’s partners in the European Union and NATO to send Russian diplomats in solidarity with Prague.
The neighboring Czech Republic, Slovakia, as well as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, soon announced that they would send a total of seven Russian diplomats together.
On Monday, his example was followed by Romania, which ordered a Russian diplomat to leave.
