Strange changes in the number of Russian diplomats in Hungary

While Russian diplomats have been expelled from several European countries for spying, according to an article of Szabad Európa, the number of Russian embassy staff in Hungary started to rise last year, but has now fallen back to below the level of last year. According to the records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the number of registered diplomats at the office swelled from 46 in November 2021 to 50 in July last year, and then rose to 59 by the end of October, meaning that

the number of employees at the Russian embassy in Budapest increased by a third as the war has progressed.

According to the article, this does not include administrative staff or spouses and relatives, nor does it include the three-person Russian consulate in Debrecen, whose staff numbers have remained unchanged over the period.

It is likely that the number of Hungarian-speaking diplomats may have decreased, at least that is what the letter sent to Telex in broken Hungarian from the Russian Embassy in Budapest indicates.

There are other strange things happening at the embassy in Budapest's Bajza Street in the 6th district. For example, according to an article in VSquare, antennae and systems that can collect the identifiers of nearby mobile phones and intercept conversations on the GSM network have been installed on the roof of the building. Such antennae were not only placed on the roof of the embassy in Budapest, the authors of the article counted 182 such devices across Europe.