The UK government on Wednesday expelled a Russian diplomat and a diplomatic spouse in what it dubbed as a tit-for-tat move to the expulsion of two British embassy staff in Moscow early this week.
The Foreign Office said that the decision came after an “increasingly aggressive and coordinated campaign of harassment against British diplomats” which, it suggested that represented a bid to drive the British embassy in Moscow to closure.
Russian ambassador to the UK Andrei Kelin was summoned to be informed about the expulsions.
‘Will not tolerate…’
In a post on X, Foreign Secretary David Lammy said, “We will not tolerate the Kremlin’s relentless and unacceptable campaign of intimidation, nor their repeated attempts to threaten UK security.”
The timeframe for the departure of the Russian diplomats was not immediately known.
Earlier on Monday, Russia‘s Federal Security Service aka FSB had said in a statement that the two expelled British diplomats had given fake personal data, while seeking permission to enter the country. It said that they had engaged in alleged intelligence and subversive activities that threatened Russia’s security.
According to a report from Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, a decision has been made to revoke the diplomats’ accreditations, ordering them to leave Russia within two weeks.
Meanwhile, the UK foreign office said, “The depths to which Russia sinks can only be met through strength. We have drawn a line under this incident and demand Russia do the same. Any further action taken by Russia will be considered an escalation and responded to accordingly.”
Expulsions of diplomats, both Western and Russian envoys vice versa, have become growingly common since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Notably, such expulsions have been going on for an even longer time. Tension had sternly escalated in March 2018 when a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, were poisoned in southern England with the Novichok nerve agent. This, the British authorities described as a targeted murder attempt coming from Moscow, a charge which was rubbished as ‘nonsense’ by the Kremlin.
