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Austria not planning to expel Russian diplomats over latest 'spy' saga

The Austrian government said on November 9 that they had launched an investigation into a 70-year-old retired colonel, suspected of working for Russian intelligence since the 1990s

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz EPA-EFE/CHRISTIAN BRUNA

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz

© EPA-EFE/CHRISTIAN BRUNA

VIENNA, November 14. /TASS/. Austria is not going to take separate steps and expel Russian diplomats because of the spy scandal involving a retired Austrian colonel, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday.

"We have clearly expressed our reaction to Russia and informed our European partners. The issue of relations with Russia is regularly discussed throughout Europe, so Austria will not take any individual steps in this regard (expulsion of diplomats - TASS)," he told a news conference in Vienna.

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"We are a country, which maintains good ties with Russia, we place our stakes on dialogue, and things will remain the same in the future," Kurz explained. "But if we suspect that the case is about espionage, we will always criticize that and protect ourselves from it, while working to independently beef up security to ensure that this will never happen again".

Furthermore, Austria will check whether this is the only espionage case, or if there are bigger spy networks. "There isn’t any proof of it yet, which is good, but we are checking it. We would act similarly, if it didn’t concern Russia but any other country," the Chancellor emphasized.

The Austrian government said on November 9 that they had launched an investigation into a 70-year-old retired colonel, suspected of working for Russian intelligence since the 1990s and providing Moscow with information about Austria’s air force, artillery and the migration crisis. Following an interrogation, Salzburg’s prosecution office reported that the colonel is suspected of having committing a crime under two articles of the Austrian Criminal Code, namely intelligence work to the detriment of Austria, state secret disclosure and deliberate state secret disclosure. The investigation team said that all the crimes could have been committed between 1992 and 2018. If the suspect is found guilty, he may face up to ten years behind bars.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov previously said that he was unpleasantly surprised to see no request from Vienna seeking explanations over the case. Austrian President and Commander-in-Chief Alexander Van der Bellen urged everyone not to stir up tensions and called on the sides to wait for the outcome of the investigation. The president also said that he was surprised that the Austrian government had decided to inform the media about the case. Van der Bellen is also confident that the spy row would not seriously harm Austrian-Russian cooperation in the long term.

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