MOSCOW, December 23 Ambassador of Germany to Russia Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told the media that the Russian side behaves mostly correctly towards German diplomats, despite disagreements on the issue of the Ukrainian crisis.
“»This, of course, is a diplomatic challenge — to come to a country that is waging a war, when you, as an ambassador, represent a government that condemns this war… On the other hand, there is a professional aspect. In it, the Russian side behaves towards to us mostly correctly. So the picture is ambiguous, substantively complex, procedurally correct,» Lambsdorff said in an interview with radio station RND.
He explained that diplomats are protected by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and stressed that he sees no signs of the possibility of violation of these rules by Russia.
However, the reduction in the number of German civil servants present in Russia to 350, which occurred in the spring, complicates the work of the embassy, Lambsdorff emphasized.
At the end of April, Berlin decided to expel more than 20 Russian diplomats. The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that “as a reaction to the hostile actions of Berlin, the Russian side decided on the “mirror” expulsion of German diplomats from Russia, as well as a significant limitation on the maximum number of employees of German diplomatic missions in our country, which was officially notified to the German Ambassador in Russia Geisa von Geyr during a conversation at the Russian Foreign Ministry on April 5, 2023.»