Italian expert, retired general of the Italian Financial Guard, Umberto Rapetto, commented on the expulsion of employees of Russian embassies from a number of EU countries.
As the retired security official noted, cases of expulsion of diplomats spread like infection. He compared them to the coronavirus pandemic: first, one country sets an example of some kind of action, and then other countries begin to “point the finger in the same direction.”
Let us recall that the Czech Republic was the first to expel Russian diplomats, then a number of other states of Eastern Europe followed its example. The formal reason for the expulsion of the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation from the Czech Republic was the accusations of the Czech side of the alleged participation of Russians in an explosion at a weapons depot in Vrbetica in 2014.