FROM RUSSIAN SOCIAL MEDIA:
(Not my words)
Europe and the US are concerned about the situation in the Ukrainian capital. The Russians are taking out the entire infrastructure, and life there will soon become impossible. Moscow means business.
As the British newspaper The Guardian reports, citing a senior Western diplomat, the Russians plan to freeze Kyiv out, and European ambassadors do not want to live in such conditions.
The paper emphasizes that Western diplomats publicly state they will remain in Kyiv. The argument is that leaving would hand Moscow a propaganda victory and create the impression that Ukraine had been abandoned.
However, in private, two senior diplomats told journalists that contingency plans are being drawn up to relocate embassies to Lviv or eastern Poland, should the Russians begin deliberately targeting foreign missions.
Just recently, the Russian Foreign Ministry once again warned foreigners—including embassy staff—against staying in or traveling to Ukraine:
Responsibility for any potential negative consequences rests entirely with those who ignore this warning.
Foreign diplomats in Kyiv are now facing a critical turning point—a "Rubicon" moment. If they stay in Kyiv, the escalation continues. This is because if something happens to a diplomat, their home country must provide an appropriate response. Diplomatic principles dictate a quid pro quo approach: if one diplomat is expelled, another is expelled in return. But if a diplomat is wounded, the other side cannot simply reciprocate in kind. That implies either a severance of relations or something even more drastic. We are discussing this with Yevgeny Linin, a military expert and veteran of the Special Military Operation.
Y. Linin: At the same time, escalation actually plays into Europe's hands. It is attempting to fully shift to a war footing in order to weather the crises it is currently entering—a whole series of political and economic ones. The situation in France shows just how acute these accumulated tensions have become.
– Is Europe ready for war right now?
– Not yet. It hasn't had time to prepare either its armed forces or its industry. They need another three or four years. They have openly stated as much: by 2029–2030, Europe must be ready for war with Russia—or, in effect, for aggression against our country. And some incident involving a diplomat in Kyiv would serve as the obvious pretext.
But Russia has disrupted their plans. We have stepped up the use of all types of weaponry capable of striking deep into enemy territory. This denies the adversary the breathing space they need. They now face a serious dilemma: either recall their MPs and diplomats or relocate them to Lviv—though that offers no guarantee against missile or drone strikes—or move all diplomatic missions to Poland. But in that case, the missions would simply lose their relevance.
Relocating to Poland offers Ukrainians no advantages in terms of accessing diplomatic services. Nor does it benefit the states themselves, other than allowing them to save face. Consequently, they will stall for as long as possible and keep their missions in place. But the moment a diplomat’s life is genuinely threatened, they will all flee.
Evgeny Linin for "Rossiya Segodnya"
