Germany expelled Russian diplomats in mid-April to “reduce the presence of intelligence services” in the country, the government said on Monday, justifying the decision that prompted the retaliatory expulsion of German diplomats from Russia, AFP reported.

“In order to reduce the presence of Russian special services (…) the employees of the Russian embassy in Germany left in the middle of the month,” the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.

“The activities of these people did not correspond to their diplomatic status,” he said, adding that “in recent weeks I have been in contact with the Russian side” on this issue.

Berlin has not yet provided any justification for the diplomats’ departure, due to which Moscow expelled about 20 employees of the German embassy in response.

The latter “left Russia on Monday,” the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Unlike the members of the Russian missions in Germany, our colleagues in question have always behaved in accordance with their diplomatic status,” he said.

Germany, which was a close economic partner of Russia before the military offensive in Ukraine, has since distanced itself from Moscow, supporting Kyiv financially and militarily in the conflict.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, Russian espionage in Germany has reached a scale rarely seen in recent years, German security services recently noted.

In the spring of 2022, Germany already expelled about 40 Russian diplomats, whom it considered a threat to its security.

On October 18, the head of Germany’s cyber security agency, Arne Schoenbom, was fired after the media reported his closeness to a cyber security consulting company suspected of having contacts with Russian intelligence services.

A month later, a German reserve officer was sentenced to one year and nine months of probation in Dusseldorf for spying for Russia.