Sweden announced Tuesday that it will expel five Russian diplomats for "activities incompatible" with their diplomatic status.

The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that "five officials of the Russian embassy in Sweden were asked to leave the country due to activities that do not comply with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations."

The ministry did not specify the nature of these activities, but the announcement came on the eve of the broadcast of an episode of a documentary series on Russian espionage activities in Sweden by the public television channel SVT.

In response to a question in the framework of this series, the Swedish intelligence said that a third of Russian diplomats work de facto for one of the Russian intelligence services.

"They are employees whose mission is to collect information and influence a country in the desired direction," Daniel Stenling, head of the counterintelligence department, told SVT.

In mid-April, Norway announced the expulsion of 15 employees of the Russian Embassy in Oslo, on suspicion of espionage.