Russian Ambassador in Bucharest summoned to Foreign Ministry over controversial stance against Crown’s Custodian Margareta

Russian Ambassador in Bucharest, Valery Kuzmin, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, to give explanations on a recent stance in a Facebook post where he criticised Crown Custodian Margareta of Romania for a speech in which she referred to Russia. Romania describes the Russian ambassador’s posting as “unacceptable”.

“Considering the recent posts of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest on social media, regarding interpretations of Romania’s history, amid speech of His Majesty Margareta, the Crown’s Custodian, at the Royal Evening of the diplomatic corps, on 21 November, Minister of Affairs Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu ordered that the Russian Ambassador to Romania, Valery Kuzmin, be called today to the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where a discussion was held at the level of director general,” says a Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release.

The Romanian MFA pointed out “the unacceptable stance of the Russian diplomatic mission and reiterated the importance of avoiding unconstructive rhetoric and the need to maintain public discourse within the limits of diplomatic usages, in order to avoid a negative impact on bilateral relations”.

The Romanian side reiterated the call for discussing the historical past within the specific institutional formats. The MFA “emphasized the importance of pragmatic approaches, based on compliance with the principles and norms of international law, in order to contribute to the promotion of constructive relations between states, as well as the importance of respecting the values and symbols of each one”.

The Russian Embassy Facebook post, entitled “On historical and geopolitical phobias of the Romanian Custodian of the Crown”, said that “in the spirit of the most serious historical phobias still fueled in the <Old Kingdom>, no less significant than the Western mainstream fake news manufacturing industry, the Custodian of the Crown decided to put on the ”geopolitical strategist cape’ who cares not only about the security and welfare of their own state, but at least of half of Eurasia and of the whole Euro-Atlantic area. Unfortunately, as compared to the grandiosity of the plan, the proposed conclusions and recipes proved to be painfully primitive”.

During the Royal Evening of the diplomatic corps on 21 November, the Custodian of the Crown, Margareta, spoke about the security in the Black Sea region and about “the attacks of Russia”, reminding the Russian aggression in the Black Sea and in the some neighbouring countries such as Georgia or Ukraine in the past years.