Sixty U.S. officials are being ordered to leave Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced Thursday, in the latest round of a diplomatic feud stemming from the poisoning of a former spy in the United Kingdom.
“US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has been summoned to our ministry, where my deputy Sergei Ryabkov is briefing him on the tit-for-tat steps against the US,” Lavrov said, per TASS, a state-run media outlet. “They include the expulsion of the same number of diplomats and our decision to withdraw consent to the work of the Consulate General in St. Petersburg.”
That step is tailored to match President Trump’s decision to expel sixty Russians, whom the administration identified as spies working under diplomatic cover, and close the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington. Trump’s move was part of a wave of expulsions ordered by western powers, who collectively sent home 151 Russian officials after British Prime Minister Theresa May accused Russia of using a chemical weapon for the attempted assassination of a Russian double-agent who was granted British citizenship.
“This is the largest expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in United States history,” Huntsman said Monday. “Today’s actions make the United States a safer place by limiting the ability of Russia to spy on Americans and conduct covert activities that threaten America’s national security.”
Russian officials, denying responsibility for the poisoning, maintain that the United Kingdom is framing Russia for the attack in order to deepen the wedge between Russia and the European Union.
“For the first time ever, a precedent of arises in international relations of a collective act of punishment of a country without proving any guilt on its part,” Ambassador Alexander Lukashevich, who represents Russia at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Thursday. “This is a large-scale provocation.”
Former Russian military intelligence officer Sergey Skripal was poisoned in Salisbury, England by “a military-grade nerve agent” developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, according to May.
“[T]his action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom,” May told the British House of Commons.
Russia has countered by suggesting that the United Kingdom poisoned Skripal — “a perfect victim,” as Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia dubbed him — in order to spark an international row.
“London and Washington are the beneficiaries of this provocation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday.
British officials countered by recalling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vow to punish traitors to the Russian state. “Let me quote the Russian president, when we think about who benefits,” deputy ambassador Jonathan Allen said during a United Nations Security Council meeting. “In 2010, [Putin] said, ‘Traitors will kick the bucket, believe me. Those other folks betrayed their friends, their brothers-in-arms. Whatever they got in exchange for it, those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on it.”
Lavrov, saying that the United Kingdom has failed to provide evidence supporting the accusation, called for an emergency meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
“I hope our Western partners will not shun an honest conversation,” he said Thursday. “Otherwise, that will be another confirmation that everything that is going on is a gross provocation.”
