Lithuania declared Russia’s interim chargé d’affaires undesirable and expelled him from the country. At the request of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vilnius, the diplomat is due to leave the EU and NATO in the Baltic in five days. Monday’s expulsion was justified by the man’s recent actions and statements, which were not described in detail and “are not compatible with his diplomatic status”.
They could be seen as interference in the host country’s internal affairs and violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the statement said.
When he was summoned, the chargé d’affaires also protested against Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia. The diplomat has headed the foreign mission in Vilnius since April, after Lithuania cut diplomatic ties with Russia and expelled the ambassador. The Lithuanian ambassador in Moscow was also sent back to Vilnius by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The reasons given at the time were Russia’s war in Ukraine and the disclosure of serious atrocities in the Kyiv area.
In Lithuania, the population broadly supports a ban on the entry of Russians with Schengen visas. This emerges from a survey published on Monday by the Vilmorus pollster. The entry stop was imposed by the governments of the Baltic States and Poland in mid-September. Among those surveyed, more than a third (34.3%) support the measure wholeheartedly, and another good quarter (28.2%) say they support it rather than reject it.