The German Foreign Ministry confirmed the information about the expulsion of Russian diplomats and explained this decision by the desire to «reduce the presence of Russian intelligence.» This was reported by n-tv with reference to the German Foreign Ministry.
“Over the past few weeks, the federal government has been negotiating with the Russian side about the presence of [employees] in the relevant diplomatic missions abroad in order to reduce the presence of Russian intelligence officers in Germany,” the ministry told reporters, adding that the expulsion of diplomats is connected precisely with this.
On April 22, it became known that employees of Russian embassies were expelled from Germany. The Podyom telegram channel reported that 20 people flew from Berlin to Moscow that day. The n-tv publication also writes that on April 22, a special flight of the Russian government aircraft Il 96-300 flew from Vnukovo to Berlin, apparently to pick up embassy employees, and then returned to Moscow.
In response to this The Russian Foreign Ministry has decided to reduce the maximum number of employees of German diplomatic missions in the country. “We strongly condemn these actions of Berlin, which continues to defiantly destroy the entire array of Russian-German relations, including their diplomatic dimension,” the Russian Foreign Ministry commented on the decision to expel diplomats from Germany.
In mid-April, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry announced 15 employees of the Russian embassy in Oslo were persona non grata and ordered them to leave the country “in the near future”. According to the Norwegian intelligence services, the expelled diplomats bought advanced technology, tried to intercept messages and recruited people to get information. At the same time, according to the Norwegian authorities, in fact they worked for the GRU, FSB and SVR.