STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden on Tuesday informed Russia that five employees with the Russian Embassy in Stockholm have been asked to leave the country, saying they are suspected of spying.
Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said their activities are “incompatible” with their diplomatic status.
In a statement, Billström said Russia’s Ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev, had been informed of the decision earlier Tuesday.
A year ago, Sweden expelled three Russian Embassy staff as several countries kicked out Russian diplomats.
Sweden’s SAPO domestic security agency has said that “every third Russian diplomat in Sweden is an intelligence officer.” It is not known how many diplomats from Russia are officially assigned to Sweden.
Billström's announcement came after public broadcasters in the Nordic countries reported in a joint investigation that Russia is suspected of spying in the waters of the Baltic Sea and North Sea using civilian fishing trawlers, cargo ships and yachts.
The probes by the public broadcasting companies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden claim to have uncovered Moscow’s alleged undersea intelligence operations by tracking the radio traffic and locations of Russian vessels traveling in the seas over the past year.
The series “Shadow War” analyzed data that revealed suspicious sailing patterns, particularly around offshore wind farms, gas pipelines and undersea power and data cables. A new episode is to be broadcast Wednesday.
Recently, SAPO was given a list of names of a number of suspected Russian intelligence officers, Swedish broadcaster SVT said.
The move comes nearly two weeks after neighboring Norway said it was expelling 15 Russian diplomats from the country and called them spies.
Alarmed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Sweden and Nordic neighbor Finland applied to join NATO in May, seeking protection under the organization’s security umbrella. Finland joined the military alliance on April 4. However, objections from NATO members Turkey and Hungary have delayed the process for Sweden, which has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years.
The Associated Press
