Russia slams Sweden over expelled diplomats

“We understand that Russia believes that this is a response action to an official at the Russian embassy in Stockholm recently asked to leave Sweden”, Johan Tegel, a press officer at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD) told Swedish news agency TT.

Sweden has expelled a Russian diplomat and Moscow has retaliated by throwing out a Swedish diplomat.

Word of the tit-for-tat expulsion of the unnamed senior envoy coincided with disclosure by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation sources that the unsafe practice of Russian and alliance warplanes violating sovereign airspace and provoking the scrambling of defensive sorties has escalated over the last two years to a level unprecedented since the end of the Cold War.

However Namli does not think that this will lead to any major action from Sweden, adding that the situation would have been different if the Swedish diplomat had been of a higher rank than the Russian diplomat.

The ministry gave no further detail on the individuals involved or when they were expelled.

Tensions between the two countries have been building since the Ukraine crisis erupted and Sweden’s security service has accused Russian Federation of using as many as a third of its diplomatic staff there for illicit intelligence gathering.

The incident followed reports in the Swedish media of an increase in Russian air force manoeuvres in the Baltic.

After a fourfold improve in Russian flights into or close to Western nations’ airspace final yr, the Kremlin’s fighter jets are on a course this yr to exceed the greater than 500 intrusions logged in 2014.