Russian ambassador summoned to the MFA. Romania decided to close the Russian Center of Culture and Science

The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Russian ambassador to Bucharest on Tuesday, who informed him that Romania decided to suspend the activity of the Russian Center for Culture and Science in Bucharest.

“At the request of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, the ambassador of the Russian Federation in Bucharest, Valery Kuzmin, was summoned on Tuesday, February 21, 2023, to the headquarters of the MAE, at the level of the Secretary of State for Strategic Affairs, to be notified of the decision of the Romanian authorities to suspend the activity of the Russian Center for Culture and Science in Romania.

The Russian ambassador was reminded of the repeated situations in which the Center deliberately engaged in actions of distorted presentation of reality and historical truth at the level of Romanian public opinion. These slippages intensified and acquired new accents, of particular gravity, recently, after the Russian Federation launched the war of aggression against Ukraine. Through its actions, the Center irremediably strayed from its natural goals of strengthening cultural ties and regrettably turned into a tool for propaganda, disinformation and excusing the war crimes of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The Secretary of State for Strategic Affairs conveyed the Romanian side’s firm disapproval of the Russian side’s constant attempts of hybrid attacks and disinformation through truncation and premeditated manipulation of reality, and appealed to the latter to renounce such practices.

The suspension of the Center’s activity will take place until August 20, 2023 at the latest, by which time the administrative procedures involved in this measure must be completed. The Russian Center for Culture and Science in Bucharest was established on the basis of the Agreement between the Government of Romania and the Government of the Russian Federation regarding the opening and operating conditions of the Romanian Cultural Institute in Moscow and the Russian Center of Science and Culture in the city of Bucharest, signed in Moscow, in on July 9, 2013. Based on the aforementioned agreement, on May 15, 2015, the Russian Center for Culture and Science was inaugurated, with headquarters in Lascăr Catargiu boulevard no. 50 from Bucharest”, according to an MAE press release