European Union governments have agreed to restrict the movement of Russian diplomats within the bloc in response to a rise in sabotage attempts that intelligence services say are often led by spies operating under diplomatic cover, the Financial Times (FT) reports.
Moscow-backed intelligence operatives have been blamed for increasingly frequent provocations against NATO member states — from arson and cyberattacks to infrastructure sabotage and drone incursions — in what EU security services call a coordinated campaign aimed at destabilizing Kiev's European allies.
Under the proposed rules, Russian diplomats stationed in EU capitals will have to notify other governments in advance of their travel plans if they intend to cross the border of the country in which they are accredited.
The initiative, led by the Czech Republic, is part of a new package of sanctions that Brussels is preparing in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The package must be unanimously approved to enter into force. Hungary, the last country to oppose the measure, has withdrawn its veto, two people familiar with the negotiations said, the FT reports.
However, legal adoption could be delayed due to a dispute over Austria's proposal to include in the package a measure that would lift sanctions on assets linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, in order to compensate for damages that the Austrian bank Raiffeisen had to pay in Russia.
Ambassadors from at least a dozen other capitals said last week they could not support the package if Austria's proposal was included, officials said. Further talks are scheduled for Wednesday.
EU intelligence services say that Russian spies posing as diplomats often run agents or operations outside the host country to avoid surveillance by counterintelligence structures.
“They are formally deployed in one country — but they operate in another,” a senior EU diplomat said, citing intelligence reports. “The host country’s security services know what they are doing, but if they cross the border, it is much harder to track them.”
The Czech government in particular has been lobbying for restrictions since May last year. Prague has expelled several Russian diplomats suspected of aiding intelligence activities. However, hundreds of them remain accredited in neighboring Austria, from where they can legally cross the border into the Czech Republic.
Jan Lipavsky, the Czech Foreign Minister, said the restrictions were needed to re-establish reciprocity.
“There is no ‘Schengen for Russia’, so it makes no sense that a Russian diplomat accredited in Spain can come to Prague whenever he wants,” he told the FT. “We should apply a strict practice of reciprocity when issuing short-term diplomatic visas in accordance with the Vienna Convention.”
The Czech Republic suffered one of the worst Russian sabotage attacks on EU soil in 2014, when explosions at an ammunition depot in Vrbjetice killed two people. Prague attributed the attack to agents of Russia's GRU military intelligence service.
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