BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) – Germany, Norway, the Netherlands and the European Union summoned Russian representatives on Tuesday after Russia threatened strikes on targets in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and urged foreigners, including diplomats, to leave.
Russia’s embassy in Germany rejected the EU complaints, saying its aim was to conduct “surgical strikes” on military targets.
Moscow said on Monday that it intended to mount strikes on Ukrainian military targets and decision-making centres in Kyiv, one day after one of its heaviest bombardments of the city since the war began.
The European Union’s diplomatic service summoned Russia’s chargé d’affaires, the bloc’s foreign policy spokesperson said on Tuesday.
Russia’s “threat to foreign citizens & diplomats to leave Kyiv is an unacceptable escalation,” spokesperson Anitta Hipper said in a post on X, calling for Moscow to “stop hitting civilians”.
The EU’s delegation is remaining in Kyiv, the spokesperson added.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said he had summoned Russia’s ambassador Nikolai Korchunov to address “the explicit threats against foreign personnel in Ukraine.”
Sweden on Monday evening summoned the Russian ambassador to “condemn Russia’s false claims of airspace violations in the Nordic-Baltic region and Russia’s threats against Latvia and other countries in the region.”
The statement by the Russian embassy in Berlin, posted on Telegram, quoted Ambassador Sergei Nechayev as saying Moscow’s military “never deliberately attack” civilian infrastructure or diplomatic missions.
It said Nechayev “directly stated that the surgical strikes on military targets in Kyiv were in response to the monstrous terrorist act committed by the militants of the Kyiv regime using long-range drones.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday that the impending strikes were in response to Kyiv’s “continuing terrorist attacks.”
Moscow has cited a drone strike last Friday on a student dorm in Ukraine’s Russian-held Luhansk region in which 21 people died. Ukraine’s military denied the Russian accusations and said it had struck an elite drone command unit in the area.
(Reporting by Lili Bayer, Louise Rasmussen and Linda Pasquini; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Sharon Singleton, Ron Popeski and Deepa Babington)
