Romania Declares “Persona Non Grata” Russian Diplomat in Bucharest

Romania declares persona non grata one military attache of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest. According to the official statement offered by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alexey Grishaev, the deputy military attache with the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, was declared persona non grata on Romanian soil. The reason for this decision is that his activities and actions contravene the provisions of the Vienna Convention from 1961 on diplomatic relations

This comes just a day after the Romanian minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Bogdan Aurescu, replied to the Russian ambassador in Bucharest after the later said that Romania shouldn’t be afraid of any retaliation from Moscow, unless the country is involved in a military maneuver in the Eastern Ukraine region, by itself or within NATO alliance:

I saw a kind of warning for Romania, not to follow the military decisions of the adventurers from NATO. It is regrettable that it is still not a well known fact within the Russian diplomacy, after 16 years since we joined the alliance, that Romania is a NATO member. Even our slogan is “Romania is NATO“. We are part of the decisions taken inside NATO, which is a defensive alliance, the strongest military alliance in the history. There is no danger for Romania and for its citizens in this crisis. Any threat towards Romania is a threat to NATO.

Bogdan Aurescu, Romanian minister of Foreign Affairs

On April 15 Poland declared 3 Russian diplomats persona non grata and Moscow, in exchange, declared 5 Polish diplomats persona non grata as well. This is why there could be expected a similar behavior in this case which could involve one or more Romanian diplomats in Moscow.