Sikorski is right to say it out loud, but the real scandal is that it took until 2026 for a senior EU foreign minister to frame the problem this bluntly.
The Scale of the Problem
Two thousand Russian “diplomats” inside the EU, and nobody can explain what forty percent of them actually do. A diplomatic corps is an occupation infrastructure with embassy plates.
The Belgian case from 2022 already told us everything. Twenty-one intelligence officers expelled. Seventeen satellite antennas on the embassy roof, up from seven in 2003. Visa applications can be processed without seventeen antennas. You need them to intercept signals, run technical collection, and support operations against European targets. Brussels was not an outlier. It was a sample.
The Minimum Viable Response
Sikorski’s proposal is the minimum viable response. Cut the numbers. Issue biometric passports for whoever remains. Restrict movement to the country of accreditation. That would not eliminate the threat, but it would shrink the operating space.
The EU has spent decades treating Russian diplomatic presence as a normal feature of European life. In reality, it has been a hostile intelligence network with a foreign ministry logo since the Soviet period. The KGB never left. It rebranded.
The Terrorism Link
The terrorism link is not speculation. We have seen sabotage plots in Germany, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Baltics, and the Czech Republic. Warehouses burning, railway signals tampered with, parcel bombs tested on cargo flights. They are part of a coordinated operation. They are taskings run through the same stations that still enjoy diplomatic immunity.
Every Russian “diplomat” in Europe should be treated as a potential operations officer until proven otherwise.
The institution has fulfilled this role for decades.
The Real Question
The question is not whether Sikorski is right. The question is whether Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and Vienna will do anything beyond issuing another statement of concern. Some of them still want channels open. Moscow reads that as permission. It always has.
