Drone targets Russian trade mission in NATO state
An unidentified drone targeted the Russian trade mission in Sweden in an act of vandalism on Tuesday, Moscow's embassy in Stockholm has said, while accusing Swedish authorities of systematic inaction. Russia's diplomatic mission in Sweden has reportedly been subject to more than a dozen such attacks over the past year.
Sometime overnight on Tuesday, a drone flew over the trade mission premises and dropped a bag of paint at its entrance, the embassy said in a statement later in the day.
The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations protects the trade mission just as much as other Russian diplomatic buildings in Sweden, the embassy pointed out. Under the convention, Stockholm has a responsibility to 'ensure the inviolability' of the facilities, it added.
The incident follows 'a series of similar recent attacks on the premises of Russia's diplomatic mission in Sweden, threatening the safety of its employees and damaging the property of the mission,' the embassy stressed.
Sweden's authorities have once again failed to comply with their international legal obligations.
After a drone dropped a glass container full of paint on the Russian Embassy in Stockholm last month, diplomats noted that numerous appeals to the Swedish police had failed to stop the incidents.
The building has been attacked at least 15 times since last May, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement following the latest incident, urging Stockholm to 'tame its ultras [radicals].'
Russian diplomatic buildings have been subject to frequent acts of vandalism and harassment since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
In February, two pro-Ukraine activists in France were sentenced to eight months of home arrest after they threw three improvised bombs filled with liquid nitrogen at the Russian consulate in Marseilles. Moscow condemned the punishment as far too lenient for an 'attempt to commit a terrorist act.'
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