Russia announced persona non grata the first secretary of the Albanian Embassy in Moscow Yonida Drogu. The expulsion of the diplomat from the country was also announced. The corresponding statement was published on the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
An Albanian diplomat must leave the country within 72 hours. The Russian Foreign Ministry reported that this decision was a response to the expulsion from Albania of the first secretary of the Russian embassy in Tirana. “We regard the actions of the Albanian side as a provocation in order to gain political points in the conditions of the election campaign that has begun in Albania, to play along with the anti-Russian forces in the West and to enlist their support,” the statement says.
Earlier, Russia announced the expulsion of foreign diplomats. A similar protest was connected with the participation of representatives of European departments in unauthorized actions on January 23 The diplomats were declared persona non grata. They will have to leave the country soon.
On February 2, the Simonovsky Court of Moscow replaced Alexey Navalny (the founder of the FBK, included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent) a suspended sentence for a real one, sentencing him to 3.5 years in a general regime colony. However, he will spend two years and eight months in prison – he was credited with the year of house arrest he was under during the preliminary investigation of the Yves Rocher case.