The US has decided that it has “too many” Russian diplomats and is expelling 60 more.
The United States is expelling 60 Russian diplomats from the country and closing the Russian consulate in Seattle, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Such measures, according to a representative of the administration of US President Donald Trump, are being taken in response to the poisoning in the UK of former GRU colonel Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, Voice of America reports.
In addition, he explained, the expulsion of diplomats should serve as a signal that there are “unacceptably many” Russian intelligence officers in the United States.
Among the diplomats expelled from the United States are 12 employees of the Russian mission to the UN. We are talking, as the agency’s interlocutor explained, about employees of the Russian special services using the UN mission as a cover.
The expelled diplomats will have to leave the United States within seven days.
In turn, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, Vladimir Dzhabarov, said that Russia will give a “mirror response” to the expulsion of diplomats from the United States.
“It is clear that the decision will be made by the country’s political leadership, but it is clear that the measures will be mirrored and will affect the same number of employees, since the number of our diplomatic missions is the same,” he told Russian media.
Former GRU officer and double agent Sergei Skripal was convicted in Russia in 2006 of spying for British intelligence, and four years later was transferred to the UK as part of a “spy exchange”. On March 4, Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious in the English city of Salisbury.
Britain accused Russia of involvement in the attempted poisoning of the Skripals and declared 23 Russian diplomats persona non grata. The European Union countries also plan to announce the expulsion of Russian diplomats due to the Skripal poisoning case on March 26.
Earlier, 35 Russian diplomats had already been expelled from the United States.
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