Moscow tells diplomats to leave Kyiv again; Ukraine says no embassy has signaled a move

Russia's Foreign Ministry has renewed its call for foreign citizens and diplomatic staff to stay out of Ukraine, saying Russian forces will keep up what it called "massive retaliatory strikes," while Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said no foreign mission had told it of plans to leave Kyiv.

"The Russian Foreign Ministry once again warns foreign citizens, including diplomatic mission personnel, against staying in or travelling to Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement reported by TRT World. "Responsibility for any potential adverse consequences rests entirely with those who disregard this warning." The Moscow Times reported the statement on Oct. 3.

Moscow presented its campaign as a reply to what it described as the Ukrainian armed forces' "terrorist acts against the civilian population," according to The Moscow Times. "The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will continue to deliver massive retaliatory strikes," the ministry said. The Moscow Times also reported that President Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine pays a price for attacking Russia.

Kyiv: no request to relocate

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi said foreign diplomatic missions had not notified the ministry of any plans to move out of Kyiv, Ukrainska Pravda reported. He was responding to a report in The Guardian that Western embassies were preparing contingency plans to relocate to Lviv or eastern Poland. "I do not know where some foreign media outlets got this information," Tykhyi told the Ukrainian outlet LIGA.net.

According to Ukrainska Pravda's account of The Guardian report, Western diplomats have said publicly that they intend to stay, conceding that a departure would serve Russian propaganda and suggest Ukraine was being abandoned. One unnamed diplomat quoted by the British newspaper said Russia aimed to "freeze Kyiv," adding: "The situation is obviously deteriorating fast."

A warning first issued in May

The ministry said the guidance was first set out in a May 25 statement and in diplomatic notes, then repeated by Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin at a briefing for the diplomatic corps two days later, TRT World reported. The ministry itself acknowledged that "many embassies remain operational" in the Ukrainian capital and that foreign officials continue to visit, and it pointed out that Western governments, including the U.S., Britain, EU members, Norway and Switzerland, have advised their citizens against travel to Ukraine, most recently in August. European missions ignored the May warning and kept working in Kyiv, Ukrainska Pravda noted. Ahead of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, several Western countries moved their embassies from Kyiv to Lviv and Poland, according to the paper.

The warning lands as Russia steps up strikes on infrastructure in Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people, including an air attack that hit a bridge across the Dnipro River, The Moscow Times reported. Both sides have also intensified attacks on grain vessels in the Black Sea, and both deny deliberately targeting civilians. Ukrainian drones, for their part, have kept hitting targets inside Russia, as in the record drone raid on Moscow's refinery belt.

What it means

The renewed warning is aimed as much at foreign capitals as at Kyiv. By placing responsibility for any harm on those who stay, Moscow is trying to raise the political cost of keeping embassies open in the Ukrainian capital. The public line from Western missions, that leaving would signal abandonment, means the statement works for now as a test of nerve rather than a trigger for departures, and Kyiv's insistence that no relocation has been requested aims to keep it that way. The risk lies in escalation: if strikes on the capital's infrastructure intensify, contingency planning could turn into decisions, and any embassy drawdown would carry diplomatic weight far beyond Kyiv, shaping how European governments read the war's trajectory.