The Irish government has asked four people from the Russian embassy to leave the country but there is no plan to close the embassy, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Saturday.
It comes after Moscow sanctioned 52 Irish politicians over the Irish government’s support for EU sanctions against Russian nationals.
Speaking at Fine Gael’s annual party conference on Saturday morning, Coveney said the diplomatic channel has to be open to have “those blunt conversations in terms of sending messages when you disagree with a country.”
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that 52 “key representatives” from Ireland were banned from travelling to Russia, including prime minister Micheál Martin, deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar, foreign and defence minister Simon Coveney, justice minister Helen McEntee, finance minister Paschal Donohoe, and parliament chairman Seán Ó Fearghaíl.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Thursday said in a statement after the meeting that it was given a copy of the list of 52 citizens subject to the travel ban, adding it will inform the individuals concerned but will not be publishing the list.
Coveney said it is essentially a list of most Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil politicians who are banned from travelling to Russia.
He said there no suggestion of a security risk to them, adding that none of the 52, as far as he is aware, had any intention to travel to Russia anytime soon.
Coveney said he believed the sanctions are designed to “unsettle the Irish political system” and to “divide people and to get Ireland talking about who’s on lists and who’s not.”
The foreign minister confirmed that the DFA had “made a decision to ask four people to leave,” adding, “but that’s an ongoing review where I take advice from the intelligence that we have.”
Coveney said Ireland should “call out Russia for the illegality of what they’re doing, the brutality of what they’re doing and we have been doing that on all platforms that we can, whether it’s on the security council, whether it’s in the EU but also on a bilateral basis with Russia,” but is ”not going to have a kneejerk reaction.
“In some ways the easy thing to do is just to say, we’re asking the Russian embassy to close, the ambassador to leave,” he said.
“I don’t believe that would achieve a lot in terms of where our real focus needs to be, which is to support Ukraine, support Ukrainian people and to work with the rest of the world to bring this madness to an end.”
Ireland has maintained military neutrality under successive governments, but not political neutrality.
Coveney said it is his view that Ireland should take a very strong position on the war in Ukraine and not be neutral.
