Russia promised to retaliate on Saturday after Iceland’s decision the day before to close its embassy in Moscow due to the conflict in Ukraine, becoming the first country to take such a step.
“All anti-Russian actions from Reykjavik will inevitably elicit a response,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, accusing Iceland of having “ruined” relations between the two countries.
“We will take this unfriendly decision into account when we establish our relations with Iceland in the future,” he added, believing that “full responsibility for this development lies” with Reykjavik.
The small Nordic country is the first to take such a step since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
Icelandic Foreign Minister Thórdís Gylfadóttir explained on Friday that “the current situation simply does not allow the small diplomatic representation to [Reykjavik] to operate in Russia.
In the Russian capital, the flag of the Icelandic embassy was symbolically removed from the representation on Friday afternoon, found a team from theFrance Media Agency.
Iceland has also asked Moscow to “limit the activities” of its embassy in the Icelandic capital and to “reduce the level of representation there”.
Reykjavik clarified that this is not, however, a severance of diplomatic relations.
The Nordic country of 375,000 people had an embassy in Moscow since 1944, except during the period from 1951 to 1953. It had been a symbolic place of East-West meeting at the end of the Cold War.
To see in video