Czech Republic wants to reduce the number of Russian diplomats
Czech Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček said that Prague would like to reduce the number of employees of the Russian Embassy so that it would correspond to the number of the Czech diplomats working in Russian, Novinky.cz reported.
“We are having a dialogue with the Russian side on the total number of diplomats in Prague,” said Petříček. He added that another topic of their talks with Russia is the need to reduce the 'excessive' number of cars registered by the Russian Embassy.
“We can only guess what all these cars are for,” the minister said. He noted that the problem of the number of non-diplomatic personnel in the Russian Embassy should also be solved in the future. In general, the number of employees of the Russian embassy should correspond to number of Czech employees, the minister concluded.
“We do not want to paralyze the work of our embassy in Moscow,” he said, pointing out the possibility of retaliatory measures from Russia.
Last year, the Security Information Service of the Czech Republic reported that China and Russia are the largest players in the country in terms of the activity of special services. The report of the Czech Ministry stated that Russia had the largest number of spies under diplomatic cover in the country for a long time.
The Czech Republic joined other European countries during the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats due to the “case of Sergei Skripal” this spring. The Czech Republic expelled three Russian diplomats in March. Moscow also expelled Czech diplomats in response.