MOSCOW/KYIV, April 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Moscow said that 18 members of the EU mission in Russia had been told to leave the country and blamed Brussels for destroying ties.
“Eighteen employees of the EU Delegation to Russia have been declared ‘persona non grata’ and will have to leave the territory of the Russian Federation in the near future,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The measure came after 19 Russian diplomats were ordered to leave the EU on April 5.
The ministry said it summoned Markus Ederer, the EU ambassador to Russia, to inform him of the retaliatory measures.
The statement said the EU bore responsibility for the “consistent destruction of the architecture of bilateral dialogue and cooperation” that had taken “decades” to create.
Western nations have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats amid increasing outrage over Moscow’s military campaign in pro-Western Ukraine, and Russia has said that it will respond to all such expulsions.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said that seven people were killed and more than two dozen injured in a Russian attack on
buses ferrying civilians from the war-torn east of the country.
“On April 14, Russian servicemen fired on evacuation buses carrying civilians in the village of Borova in the Izium district. Preliminary data shows seven people died. Another 27 people were injured,” the office of Ukraine’s
prosecutor general said in a statement on social media.
In other development, Kyiv regional police chief Andriy Nebitov said a majority of people killed in Bucha, a town outside the Ukrainian capital reclaimed recently from Russian forces, died from gunshot wounds.
“Ninety-five percent of people were shot by snipers or with small arms,” Nebitov told a news conference.
“People were simply shot in the streets during Russia’s occupation. This is a fact that has been recorded. In the 21st century, it’s impossible to hide these kinds of crimes. They were witnessed by observers and also recorded on camera,” he added.
A team of experts from the forensic department of France’s national gendarmerie has been working for several days to examine and identify those buried in the largest mass grave found to date in the devastated town.
The alleged violence by invading Russian forces in Bucha has shocked the world.
Local residents buried the bodies themselves during the bloody siege by the Russian army, which withdrew on March 30 after a month’s occupation.
After their departure, bodies of men dressed in civilian clothes, some with their hands tied, were found scattered in the streets.
Since then, several mass graves have been discovered. The mayor of Bucha Anatoliy Fedoruk says more than 400 bodies have been found since the withdrawal of Russian troops.
The Hague-based International Criminal Court, which deals with rights abuses, has investigators in Ukraine and its chief has described the country as a “crime scene”. — NNN-AGENCIES
