Both parties announced Friday that Russia is expelling ten Romanian diplomats in retaliation for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Russian federation declared 10 employees of the Romanian embassy in Moscow persona non grata,” the Romanian foreign ministry said in a statement.

The news was confirmed by Moscow and follows the April 5 expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats “whose activities breached the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” according to the Romanian foreign ministry.

The Russian foreign ministry also said Friday it “firmly rejects the groundless attempts by the Romanian side to blame Russia for war crimes in Ukraine.”

It slammed “Bucharest’s policy of whitewashing the atrocities committed by (Ukraine’s) national guard against civilians as well as the supply of weapons, equipment and other assistance to the regime in Kyiv”.

Romania summoned the Russian ambassador to Bucharest Valery Kuzmin on Thursday to protest an article published on the Russian embassy website, that said “a stream of outright lies, falsifications, staged provocations, and disinformation” about what was happening in Ukraine was “created and financed by the collective West.”

“The repeated use by the Russian mission of inappropriate, offensive and provocative language directed at Romania and NATO is unacceptable,” the ministry said.

An employee of the Bulgarian embassy in Moscow was also declared “persona non grata”, the Russian foreign ministry said in a separate statement.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Western countries have imposed several rounds of sanctions and expelled scores of Russian diplomats.

Moscow has threatened to respond to each of these actions, and hundreds of Western diplomats have already been removed.