Romania's Foreign Ministry announced today, Monday, that it will expel a Russian diplomat, making it the last European country to take such a move in solidarity with the Czech Republic, which is locked in arguments with Moscow.
The ministry stated that Alexei Grichayev, assistant military attache at the Russian embassy in Bucharest, would be considered "persona non grata in light of his activities and movements contrary to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations."
Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Orisko summoned the Russian ambassador, Valery Cosmin, today, according to the statement.
The Czech government accused the Russian intelligence services of being behind an explosion that killed two people in a weapons depot in the eastern Czech Republic in 2014, in an incident described by President Milos Zeman on Sunday as resembling terrorist attacks.
After Prague expelled 18 Russian diplomats on the back of the accusations, Moscow responded by expelling 20 employees of the Czech embassy, which pushed bilateral relations to reach their lowest levels in decades.
Last Tuesday, Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamacic appealed to the member states of the European Union and NATO to expel Russian diplomats in solidarity with his country, prompting neighboring Slovakia and the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) to announce the expulsion of a total of 7 Russian diplomats.
For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the expulsion of a second Italian diplomat, and gave him 24 hours to leave Moscow, and announced the expulsion of another Ukrainian diplomat.
"There is absolutely no basis for any accusations against Russia in the context of the various events in the Czech Republic," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that there was "no evidence" of the accusations that caused "severe damage" to bilateral relations.