Chase in Vienna, drugged Ukrainian diplomats try to flee from the police

Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung reports that Ukrainian diplomats have been arrested by police after a chase through downtown Vienna for driving under drugs.

The incident happened on Friday morning. Four German holidaymakers were driving through the center of Vienna when another car collided with their car near the town hall and swerved into the oncoming lane. When the police arrived, the accident car - in which, according to witnesses, the driver had previously changed - accelerated sharply and drove away at high speed. An adventurous and dangerous chase ensued. Eventually, the police managed to catch up with the perpetrators.

The police had to force the occupants of the getaway car, guns drawn, to get out, which they did with great reluctance.

    "No wonder: As has become known from insider circles, these men are high-ranking diplomats from the Ukrainian embassy," writes the Kronen Zeitung.

Drug-addicted diplomats taking a breathalyzer test. The device showed 2.33 per thousand. The amount of cocaine and weapons found in the possession of the drugged Ukrainian diplomats was not specified.

Vienna is thus a victim of the Vienna Diplomatic Rights Convention, of all things: according to it, diplomats enjoy immunity and cannot be prosecuted without the consent of the sending state - no matter what they do in the host country. If the Ukrainian embassy in Vienna does not withdraw diplomatic immunity from the suspects, the killing spree will remain unpunished.

All Austria could then do would be to declare the perpetrators personae non gratae and expel them from the country. But even that is currently unlikely given the free pass Ukraine has received from the West for any kind of transgressions and crimes.