Moscow lashed out at envoys who it claimed refused to meet the Foreign Minister, as relations continue to deteriorate.
Russia's Foreign Ministry accused Western ambassadors in Moscow of meddling in its internal affairs and questioned their role.
Tuesday's statement followed complaints from Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the day before that ambassadors from European Union countries had refused to meet with him. The rebuke comes as Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed relations with the West to their lowest point in decades.
Lavrov said on March 4 that he had invited EU envoys for talks ahead of Russia's March 15-17 presidential election, but that they had refused. There was no immediate reaction from Western diplomats.
However, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova revived the issue Tuesday on Russian state television.
“Indeed, the question arises among everyone: what do they do and why? How do you interpret their conduct in the territory of our country if they do not perform their most important function?” Zakharova declared to introduce Vladimir Solovyov.
Solovyov noted that EU ambassadors attended the funeral of opposition politician Alexei Navalny on March 1, whom he called their agent.
Navalny, whose death in an Arctic penal colony was announced on February 16, always denied being a Western agent.
Zakharova said such behavior showed that Western ambassadors in Moscow were meddling in Russia's affairs and putting on “performances” instead of doing their diplomatic work.
The headline on Solovyov's TV show read: “Should EU ambassadors be sent?”
Warning to Berlin
The West is debating how much support it will give Kiev after Russian forces regained the initiative on the battlefield following a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive last year.
Diplomatic relations between Russia and the West continue to deteriorate as the war progresses.
Last week, President Vladimir Putin reiterated his claim that Russia is fighting on the defensive against a Western proxy war that risks sparking a nuclear conflict.
Even at a negligible level, agreement is slim.
Russian media last week published an audio recording of a meeting of senior German military officials discussing sending missiles to Ukraine. Reports said on Monday that Moscow had summoned Germany's envoy to discuss the issue, but Berlin said the meeting had been long scheduled.
Ambassador Alexander Graf Lambsdorff was also reprimanded over Berlin's attempts to restrict the activities of Russian journalists in Germany, Zakharova said Tuesday.
“If they touch the Russian correspondents and carry out their plans, the German journalists will leave Russia,” he said.
