Expert slams West for denying visas to Russian diplomats, warns about reciprocity

Expert slams West for denying visas to Russian diplomats, warns about reciprocity Alexey Martynov recalled that Austria, France, Switzerland, and the United States had denied visas to Russian diplomatsMOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. By denying entry visas to Russian diplomats for attending UN events, Western countries disregard their international commitments and forget about the principle of reciprocity, Alexey Martynov, an associate professor at the Financial University under the Russian government and director of the International Institute of the Newly Established States, told TASS. He recalled that Austria, France, Switzerland, and the United States had denied visas to Russian diplomats. "After eight months of waiting, Austria denied a visa to a candidate for deputy head of the Russian mission to the Vienna-based international organizations. In fact, this situation is systemic in nature," he noted. "Back in 1959, Austria pledged to the International Atomic Energy Agency to issue entry visas to diplomats ‘as quickly as possible.’ However, after February 2022, Vienna began regularly delaying the issuance of visas to Russian representatives and expelled a number of employees under the pretext of espionage charges." Moreover, starting from January 26, 2026, the Austrian foreign ministry introduced a requirement that Russian diplomats not accredited in the country had to provide notifications about their movements inside the EU zone. The Netherlands subsequently followed suit with the same measures. "Other European Union countries impose such sanctions in a different way: for instance, the Czech Republic, Germany, and France simply stopped letting in diplomats with Schengen visas, demanding they have only national visas of a concrete country," Martynov noted. "In other words, the visa ‘shrinkage’ is not Austria’s initiative only, but rather an element of a general architecture of pressure countries of the collective West are building against Russia’s diplomatic presence. And they are doing this in a coordinated and systematic manner." "The 1961 Vienna convention is a document that doesn’t divide its participants into ‘friends’ and ‘foes.’ It imposes the same obligations on all countries hosting foreign missions and equally protects all diplomats, regardless of their citizenship and the current situation," the expert stressed. "The host country’s obligations are not a gesture of good will that can be turned on or off optionally, but a fundamental norm of international law underlying the entire system of interstate communication." By eroding the norms of the Vienna Convention to fit the current political situation, Vienna and its partner in the collective West "are opening a door that can be slammed shut in both directions," he warned. "It is worth recalling that the Republic of Austria owes the recognition of its statehood and restoration of its sovereignty in 1955 to the Soviet Union and Russia is its legal successor," he added. 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