President Igor Dodon said the Moldovan authorities, especially the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and the Security and Intelligence Service, didn’t have plausible reason to expel the five Russian diplomats from the Republic of Moldova. Speaking to journalists after the meeting of the Supreme Security Council in the evening of June 6, the Head of State said the Ministry and the SIS didn’t inform the President of Moldova about the taken decision, as the law provides. This shows that it is a political decision, IPN reports.

“They tried to inform me in detail about the preconditions on which the expulsion of the Russian diplomats was based. Given the provided information, I think there were no sufficient reasons for taking such drastic measures. What was presented to me reveals rather political arguments in taking such decisions. The SIS does not say in whose interests, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expelled the Russian diplomats based on information from the SIS,” stated Igor Dodon. He specified that in some of the states the administration of the responsible institutions is fired for such acts. He noted he will demand to examine all the cases of the kind in the meeting of the Supreme Security Council, quarterly.

According to President Dodon, the expulsion of five diplomats is a political step taken in geopolitical interests. “It is regrettable that the state institutions do not notice that other Western partners of ours break the law,” he stated, adding he requested the SIS to provide detailed information about the work of all the diplomats in Chisinau. “I think that if someone breaks the law, they should be penalized, all of them, either from the East or from the West, but not selectively and based on geopolitical reasons.”

On May 29, five diplomats of Russia’s Embassy were declared personas non grata in Moldova. The Moldovan authorities didn’t provide detailed information about the reasons for the expulsion. Later, five employees of Moldova’s Embassy in Russia were also declared personas non grata, in response to the expulsion of the Russian diplomats from Moldova.