But Malayan did little by way of face-to-face EU diplomacy nowadays, due to a cordon sanitaire imposed on Russia after Putin\u2019s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n
EU cold shoulder<\/p>\n Russian diplomats were now all-but banned from the European Commission and never visited the EU Council, European Parliament [EP], or the 27 member states\u2019 EU missions, as well as being shunned by think-tanks and lobby firms in Brussels.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll commission services have suspended any bilateral engagement with Russian state representatives,\u201d said EU foreign service spokeswoman Anitta Hipper.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn practice, a number of meetings have taken place in the EEAS [European External Action Service] since 2022 with representatives of the Russian mission to the EU, aimed at communicating EU positions [complaints], or discussing matters of operational engagement \u2026 among others, staff matters of the EU delegation in Moscow,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The EU Council said: \u201cThere is a suspension of access to the council premises for Russian diplomats.\u201d<\/p>\n EU ambassadors in the \u2018Coreper II\u2019 club could, in theory, invite a Russian diplomat to attend one of their meetings, or to lower-level \u2018working group\u2019 talks, the way they used to pre-2022, a Council spokesman said, but they have never done so since Putin went fully on the rampage, while inviting Russian dissidents, such as Yulia Navalnaya<\/a>, instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 27 member states\u2019 EU embassies had the same approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t meet with Russian diplomats, don\u2019t invite them to our events, and don\u2019t attend theirs,\u201d said a Czech diplomat, echoing Austria, the Baltic states, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. \u00a0<\/p>\n Even Slovakia, which was led by the EU\u2019s most pro-Russian prime minister, Robert Fico, was not breaking ranks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn line with the political approach agreed by all EU member states in 2022, the permanent representation of the Slovak Republic to the EU does not invite representatives of the Russian federation to events it organises, nor does it hold bilateral meetings with individual Russian diplomats,\u201d the Slovak foreign ministry told EUobserver.\u00a0<\/p>\n The EU Parliament said: \u201cSince March 2022, diplomatic and government staff of Russia and Belarus are banned from entering the premises \u2026 as well as EP liaison offices inside and outside the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n MEPs were, in theory, free to meet Russians off-campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the centre-right European Peoples\u2019 Party and rightwing European Conservatives and Reformists, the Socialists & Democrats and The Left, liberal Renew Europe, and the Green groups, which together had 577 out of parliament\u2019s 720 MEPs, told EUobserver their members did not do so.<\/p>\n The two far-right, pro-Russian groups – Patriots for Europe (PfE) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), with 122 MEPs – did not reply.\u00a0<\/p>\n But if their declarations in the EP\u2019s transparency register<\/a> were to be believed, they also avoided Malayan.\u00a0<\/p>\n MEPs from the PfE and ESN\u2019s most fawningly pro-Kremlin delegations (Germany\u2019s Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland, Hungary\u2019s Fidesz, and France\u2019s Rassemblement\u00a0national\u00a0) declared dozens of meetings with Chinese, US, and Israeli diplomats, as well as Big Tobacco lobbyists, both in and out of parliament buildings in 2024 and 2025, but no Russians. \u00a0<\/p>\n MEPs from Fico\u2019s unattached Smer party also declared zero Russians.<\/p>\n Mainstream think-tanks in Brussels, such as the European Policy Centre or Friends of Europe, said they would not invite Malayan.\u00a0<\/p>\n Even the hard-right MCC Corvinus think-tank, which had links to Fidesz, told EUobserver: \u201cWe [at] MCC Brussels have no relations with Russian diplomats.\u201d<\/p>\n And EU lobby firms were legally banned <\/a>from doing business with Russia in June 2022.<\/p>\n Malayan\u2019s Brussels friends<\/p>\n The EU cold shoulder did not mean that Malayan and his staff had no one to talk to, however.<\/p>\n The EU, Nato, and Belgian national capital hosted 187 embassies, 94 permanent representations, and 131 international organisations in total, said the Belgian foreign ministry.<\/p>\n There were 13,099 people with diplomatic status in Belgium, composed of 5,983 diplomats and 7,116 family members.\u00a0<\/p>\n And in a sign of how many of these might welcome Putin\u2019s men and women for cocktails, 39 UN states either backed Russia or abstained in the last vote on the Ukraine war at the UN General Assembly<\/a>, including China, India, Iran, Pakistan, and South Africa, as well as Belarus and Central Asian states.\u00a0<\/p>\n Malayan and his squad were free to meet any of the 1,700 international firms which had offices in Brussels.\u00a0<\/p>\n Russian embassies organised events with the Russian diaspora of some 30,000 people in Belgium (who prevailingly backed Putin) and the 18 Russian Orthodox churches<\/a> there.\u00a0<\/p>\n And Russian diplomats accredited in Belgium were free to travel to any of the 25 EU states, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, in the \u2018Schengen Area\u2019, albeit not as freely as before<\/a>.<\/p>\n Belgium declined to say how many Russian diplomats it hosted these days, citing EU data-privacy law.\u00a0<\/p>\n But there were about 210 of them back in 2022, it previously said, if you counted Russia\u2019s embassies to Belgium and the EU and its consulates in Brussels and Antwerp.<\/p>\n And Malayan\u2019s EU mission still had some 45 diplomatic posts and 15 technical staff in July 2026, a Western intelligence contact said.<\/p>\n ussia\u2019s real estate in Belgium also gave away the size of its presence.<\/p>\n This included Malayan\u2019s EU embassy – \u2018H\u00f4tel Brugmann\u2019, a 2,200 square-metre mansion from the 1890s, which used to belong to a Belgian baron, and was situated next door to the US embassy, in the heart of the EU diplomatic quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n Russia had a 46,000 square-metre secure compound at 66 Avenue de Fr\u00e9, in the leafy Uccle suburb in Brussels, which housed Russia\u2019s bilateral embassy to Belgium, the Russian ambassador to Belgium\u2019s residence, and its (closed in 2021) embassy to Nato.\u00a0<\/p>\n Its Brussels consulate was situated at 78 Rue Robert Jones, also in Uccle, a district of the EU capital in which many Russian diplomats and their families lived, while its second consulate was in the city centre of Antwerp (160 Jan van Rijswijcklaan), Belgium\u2019s economic hub. \u00a0<\/p>\n And the H\u00f4tel Brugmann<\/a>, Avenue de Fr\u00e9, and Jan van Rijswijcklaan<\/a> addresses were all storied nests of Russian spies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Belgium has expelled 68 Russian diplomats<\/a> from these three locations since 2022 on grounds of espionage, Belgium\u2019s intelligence service, the Veiligheid van de Staat \/ S\u00fbret\u00e9 de l’\u00c9tat (VSSE), previously said. \u00a0<\/p>\n And Russia had also weaponised its buildings, by putting 17 signals-intelligence antennas on the rooftops of its Avenue de Fr\u00e9 complex, Belgian daily De Tijd reported<\/a> in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n When Belgium expelled spies in the past, Russia sent back new ones to fill the old diplomatic posts, the VSSE has also said.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Europe has now started taking a different approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said in February that Malayan had to slash his number of posts by a third, citing security concerns: \u201cWe will not tolerate abuse of diplomatic power<\/a>\u201d, she said at the time.<\/p>\n The EU also cited the need for \u201ccloser parity\u201d with its smaller embassy in Moscow, under Article 11 of the Vienna Convention<\/a> on Diplomatic Relations, which empowers accrediting entities to unilaterally reduce foreign embassies to a \u201creasonable and normal\u201d size, in relation to \u201cthe needs of the particular mission\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Russian mission to the EU was notified it should cap its size at 40 staff, starting from 1 September 2026,\u201d Hipper, Kallas\u2019 spokeswoman, told EUobserver.<\/p>\n But \u201cthis number does not include the head of the mission [Malayan],\u201d Hipper said. \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/353b7a418c5f056e981a8833f1c90164-600x445.jpg\")
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Russia\u2019s EU embassy, the 1890s \u2018H\u00f4tel Brugmann\u2019, in the heart of Brussels\u2019 diplomatic district (Source: Gaia Neiman<\/a>\/EUobserver)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/brusse_3_720-1.png\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AEB-2.jpg\")
Malayan (circled) at meeting with European businessmen at the Russian embassy in 2018 (Source: