Senior officials in Moscow signaled a tit-for-tat response is likely
FILE PHOTO. Russian Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine. © Sputnik
The Kiev city authorities have annulled a land-lease agreement with the Russian embassy, the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitaly Klitschko, announced in a Telegram post on Thursday.
The mayor said the city council had also appealed to the country’s Cabinet of Ministers to transfer the property to the Ukrainian state. The embassy compound, which is located in a central district of Kiev, remains closed since February 2022, when Moscow evacuated its remaining diplomatic personnel from the country shortly before the beginning of the current hostilities.
Moscow will likely respond in a tit-for-tat fashion by seizing Ukraine’s diplomatic property, Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, has said.
“Usually, the measures are symmetrical,” the official told RIA Novosti, adding that the “Ukrainians went completely rogue.”
A similar stance was voiced by the deputy speaker of the Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev. “This is a case when the response should be at least one hundred percent mirrored. And the Russian side has all the necessary means for this,” the official stated.
