Drone targets Russian Embassy in NATO country
An unidentified drone flew over the Russian Embassy in the Swedish capital, Stockholm on Sunday and dropped a container of paint near the main entrance. According to a statement issued by the diplomats, the drone operators used a glass vessel which could have caused serious injuries had it struck anyone.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova urged Sweden to 'tame its ultras [radicals]' following the incident.
'Tomorrow, Stockholm will receive a note of protest. Sweden must tame its ultras, take control of the situation, and strictly observe the Vienna Convention,' Zakharova told TASS on Sunday.
The embassy said these types of incidents have persisted for over a year, and that repeated appeals to Swedish police and the Foreign Ministry have not produced any results. It accused Stockholm of ignoring its obligations under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which requires host countries to protect foreign embassies and their personnel.
Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Russian diplomatic missions have been frequently harassed, with vandals throwing eggs or defacing buildings with spray paint.
In January, a Ukrainian citizen living in Sweden rammed his vehicle into the embassy gates. The same individual previously targeted Russian diplomatic premises in 2015 and 2018.
In April, paint cans were dropped in front of the embassy's auxiliary building and residential compound, which includes a school. 'The probes into the previous incidents allegedly conducted by Swedish law enforcement yielded no results,' the embassy said at the time. The diplomats noted that the incident in April was the 11th in the past year.
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