Then on April 5, 2022, 19 ‘diplomats’ of the Russian Mission to the EU were expelled from Belgium as persona non grata. (Some have the figure at 21.) At the same time, Western countries were PNGing (persona non grata) several hundred Russian ‘diplomats’. The findings, including details of Moscow’s actual non-diplomatic activities, were shared by the Belgian State Security Service (VSSE) with their Western counterparts.
Since then, authentic Russian diplomats accredited to the EU have not been able to perform their official work. Any contacts with European institutions are purely technical in nature and meant to deal with practical issues of the Russian diplomatic corps in Belgium and the EU.
In this “who to trust or mistrust” milieu, Kiril Logvinov was appointed in September 2022 as ‘chargé ‘daffaires’, chief of Russia’s mission to the EU. He replaced Vladimir Tšišov, who had served there for 17 years, an unusually lengthy tenure. (In Russian influence operations, it takes long to build credence, close relationships and mutual confidence in the recruitment process.)
