MOSCOW, January 24. /TASS/. Russians in Estonia will have to visit other diplomatic facilities to receive consular services, Russian Ambassador to Tallinn Vladimir Lipayev said on Tuesday.

Earlier, Moscow announced its decision to downgrade diplomatic relations with Estonia in response to a significant reduction in the number of Russian embassy personnel in Tallinn.

"Undoubtedly, the provision of some consular services will slow down so people will apparently have to visit other overseas facilities. We can’t say at this point how our consular work will be reorganized but this is definitely going to have consequences," Lipayev predicted.

The envoy pointed out that there were about 300,000 Russian-speaking people living in Estonia. "The number of consular workers was in fact drastically slashed in just one year, which certainly has impacted the quality of consular services for Russian nationals," he stressed, adding: "It seems that it is being done on purpose to create as many problems as possible for the Russian-speaking population." Still, in Lipayev’s words, the blame is being put on Russia.

"The thing to understand is that consular work resembles an assembly line. If one day, say, 15 people work at the assembly line, and the next day, there are only three, they simply can’t do the work they are expected to do," Lipayev explained.

The Estonian Foreign Ministry stated on January 11 that Russia was to bring the number of its personnel down to eight diplomats and 15 technical workers so that both countries would have the same number of staff.