\u201cEspionage is a security issue for Austria,\u201d Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger told POLITICO. \u201cThis government has made a policy shift and is taking consistent action against it. We have made this unmistakably clear to the Russian side, also with regard to the \u2018forest of antennas\u2019 at the Russian mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meinl-Reisinger said it was \u201cunacceptable\u201d for the officials to invoke their diplomatic immunity to carry out spying operations in Austria, and said the country would move to tighten the espionage provision in the criminal code to curb the illicit activity.<\/p>\n
As a result of its proximity to the Iron Curtain, Vienna was a hotbed for foreign spies throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Because the country\u2019s criminal code punishes only espionage actions that directly target Austria<\/a>, it continues to be seen as a relatively safe haven for intelligence agents.<\/p>\n Since the start of the Kremlin\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Austria has revoked the diplomatic status of 14 Russian officials found to \u201chave engaged in acts incompatible with their diplomatic status.\u201d However, around 220 staff remain at Russian diplomatic missions in the country, according to ORF<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cEspionage is a security issue for Austria,\u201d Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger told POLITICO. \u201cThis government has made a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[7982,22,6172,220,93,223,5,228,24,583,25],"class_list":{"0":"post-14621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-austria","9":"tag-espionage","10":"tag-eu-russia-relations","11":"tag-intelligence","12":"tag-kremlin","13":"tag-media","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-satellites","16":"tag-security","17":"tag-spying","18":"tag-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/russia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}