This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/world/europe/russia-expels-diplomats.html

The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 4 Version 5
Russia to Expel 60 U.S. Diplomats; Tensions Are Worst in Decades Russia to Expel 60 U.S. Diplomats; Tensions Are Worst in Decades
(about 4 hours later)
LONDON — Russia will expel 60 American diplomats and probably dozens from other nations, the Kremlin said Thursday, intensifying its clash with Europe and the United States. MOSCOW — Russia on Thursday escalated a confrontation with Europe and the United States over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain, saying it would expel 60 American diplomats and an unspecified number of envoys from other countries to retaliate for a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats working in the West and beyond that was ordered this week.
The action, which also includes closing the American consulate in St. Petersburg, retaliates for the expulsions of more than 150 Russian officials in other countries. Those expulsions were a response to a poison attack on British soil that Britain and its allies blamed on Moscow. Furious at what it described as an anti-Russian campaign orchestrated by Washington and London, the Kremlin exceeded an equivalent response to the United States and ordered the closing of the American Consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. The consulate is bigger and far more important to relations than the Russian Consulate in Seattle, which the Trump administration ordered closed on Monday as part of its expulsion decree.
The United States ambassador to Russia, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, announced. Sixty American diplomats will be expelled from Russia — the same as the number of Russian diplomats whom Washington is expelling. The Americans were given until April 5 to leave. The crisis over the March 4 poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter has driven tensions between the Kremlin and the West to their highest pitch in decades and forced European countries like Germany that are usually wary of clashing with Moscow to choose sides. Britain contends that the poison used was a signature Russian nerve agent created by Soviet-era scientists.
In addition, Russia plans to expel an unspecified number of diplomats from the more than 20 other countries and NATO that joined Britain and the United States in expelling Russians. Mr. Lavrov said the number would “mirror” the number of expelled Russians, which suggested that the ultimate total could exceed 150. (Britain and Russia have already each expelled 23 of the other country’s representatives.) Voicing alarm that the East-West confrontation was spinning out of control, the secretary general of the United Nations, António Guterres, said that the crisis recalled the Cold War, only without the controls and channels of communication established before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union “to make sure things would not get out of control when tensions rise.”
The crisis over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter has driven tensions between the Kremlin and the West to their highest pitch in decades. The responses raise the prospect of more serious escalations, either public or clandestine. The intensifying crisis has also put new pressure on President Trump. He has been loath to criticize Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and, against the advice of his advisers, he avoided any mention of the March 4 nerve agent attack in Salisbury, England, when he telephoned Mr. Putin to congratulate him on his lopsided victory in Russia’s March 18 election.
The United States condemned the Russian retaliation. “With its regrettable, unwarranted decision today, it is clear that Russia is not interested in dialogue about issues that matter to our two countries,” the State Department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said on Twitter. “Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack in the United Kingdom.” Following his practice of avoiding public criticism of Russia, Mr. Trump made no mention of the expulsions during a speech in Ohio on Thursday afternoon.
Relations were already rocky over Moscow’s roles in the wars in Syria and Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea, its meddling in elections in the United States and elsewhere, the assassination of Kremlin foes in Russia and abroad, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against other countries and what Western officials have described as a broad, largely covert effort to destabilize and discredit liberal democracies. Hours later the White House issued a muted response, calling the Kremlin actions “a further deterioration” in United States-Russia relations.
Russia as a whole and many powerful Russians individually are already under economic sanctions by the West, and London has vowed to tighten its scrutiny and control of the vast Russian wealth — much of it held by allies of President Vladimir V. Putin — that has flowed into Britain in recent years. Britain has also said it will re-examine several suspicious deaths of Kremlin opponents. “The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom,” the White House said in a statement. “Russia’s response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it.”
Mr. Putin and his government have denied any involvement in the March 4 attack on Sergei V. Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and have tried to cast blame on Britain, the United States, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and others. In a sign that Russia’s political elite still retains hope that President Trump wants to take a softer line on Moscow, Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of Parliament, told the Interfax news agency on Thursday that Mr. Trump had been forced to expel Russian diplomats on Monday under “pressure” from unidentified foes of the Kremlin who were angry that he had congratulated Mr. Putin.
The Skripals were found unconscious in a busy shopping area in the small English city of Salisbury, where Mr. Skripal lives. He remains hospitalized in critical condition, but his daughter is showing improvement, British officials announced on Thursday. British officials say that hundreds of people could have been exposed to the toxin used against the Skripals. Russian politicians and state-controlled media outlets have long clung to the idea that Mr. Trump is Moscow’s friend and would like to improve relations but has been pressured into taking a tough line by what they describe as America’s “deep state,” a supposed network of hidden powers hostile to Russia and often loyal to former administrations.
Mr. Lavrov said that Russia had called for a meeting next Tuesday of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to “establish the truth” with respect to the Skripal case. This resilient trust in Mr. Trump, however, has been severely undermined by the American decision to rally behind British accusations that Russia was to blame for the nerve agent attack on Sergei V. Skripal, a former military intelligence office who spied for Britain, and his daughter, Yulia. The Russians also are angry over Washington’s role in mobilizing a broad coalition of European and other countries in support of Britain.
Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and her government contend that the pair were poisoned with one of an extremely powerful class of nerve agents known as “Novichok,” developed by Soviet scientists in the 1970s and ’80s. They claim to have solid evidence that Russia was probably behind the attack, and that Mr. Putin himself probably approved it. In all, 27 countries are ejecting more than 150 Russians, including people listed by their embassies and consulates as diplomats, and military and cultural attachés. Western officials say that many of the Russians are spies and that the expulsions will hinder Russian espionage.
The British government has not made its evidence public, but has shared it with major allies, who have said that they agree with London’s conclusions. Britain’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, who was visiting Washington on Thursday as the Russian expulsion order was announced, called it a response to a powerful Western message: That for the first time the United States and two dozen other nations would “act together to respond to a range of aggressive Russian behavior.”
President Trump, who has long been loath to criticize Mr. Putin or his government, has made no public statement on the nerve-agent attack or who was to blame for it. But officials in his administration have publicly backed Mrs. May’s statements, and on Monday the president ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials who work in the United States, and the closing of the Russian consulate in Seattle. Wary of picking a fight with the whole of Europe, however, Russia has focused its fury on London and Washington, accusing them of strong-arming allies to endorse what it insists are unfounded accusations of Russian involvement in the attack on the Skripals.
More than 20 other countries, primarily European, also announced expulsions on Monday, and a few more joined in on Tuesday, as did NATO headquarters in Brussels. The expulsions were a remarkable show of international unity and coordination, in solidarity with Britain, which had already forced 23 Russian officials to leave the country; Moscow responded by expelling 23 Britons. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that it would make a “mirror” response to expulsions by Germany, France and other countries that expelled a small number of Russian diplomats, suggesting equivalent expulsions of diplomats from European countries, Australia and other nations that ordered out Russian envoys on Monday.
In all, 27 countries are ejecting more than 150 Russians, including people listed by their embassies and consulates as diplomats, and military and cultural attachés. Western officials say that many of the Russians are spies and that the expulsions will hinder Russian espionage efforts. But Moscow avoided denouncing those countries and instead accused the American authorities of “encouraging and fomenting a slander campaign against our country.” In a statement, the ministry demanded that they “stop their reckless actions aimed at ruining bilateral relations.”
The Russian retaliation is likely to hurt Western espionage capabilities in Russia. The United States and its allies also use diplomatic cover for their spies. In remarks on Russian television on Thursday evening, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, scoffed at accusations of a Russian role in the Salisbury attack as “unprecedented impudence” and said Western actions amounted to “gangsterism in international affairs.”
Mr. Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who was imprisoned in Russia for selling secrets to the British, was sent to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap. Why he would be targeted years later is unclear, but political and security analysts have said that the attack served as a warning to those who would cross Mr. Putin that, even in exile, they are never beyond the Kremlin’s reach. Mr. Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who was imprisoned in Russia for selling secrets to the British, was sent to Britain in 2010 as part of a spy swap. Why he would be targeted years later is unclear, but political and security analysts have said that the attack was a warning to those who would cross Mr. Putin that, even in exile, they are never beyond the Kremlin’s reach.
On March 12, Nikolai A. Glushkov, a former Russian business executive and critic of the government, died suddenly at his home in London, and the police are treating the case as a murder investigation. Relations between Russia and the West were already rocky over Moscow’s roles in the wars in Syria and Ukraine, Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, its meddling in elections in the United States and elsewhere, the assassination of Kremlin foes in Russia and abroad, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against other countries and what Western officials have described as a broad, largely covert effort to destabilize and discredit liberal democracies.
Worries about the escalation of Russia’s tensions with the West were on display Thursday at the United Nations, where the secretary general, António Guterres, told reporters he was reminded of the atmosphere that prevailed during the Cold War era. He called for restoration of hotline-type communications between Moscow and Washington. Mr. Putin last year ordered the United States Embassy in Moscow to reduce its staff by 755 employees, mostly Russians working as guards, drivers and in other support jobs, after Congress ordered sweeping sanctions against Russia to punish it for meddling in the American election.
“In the Cold War, there were clearly two superpowers with a complete control of the situation of two areas in the world. Now, we have many other actors that are relatively independent and with an important role in many of the conflicts that we are witnessing,” he said. Russia’s decision on Thursday to evict 60 American diplomats will further strain the American Embassy’s already reduced operations, making it even more difficult to process visas and watch over economic relations and other matters on which Russia and Washington still sometimes collaborate. The Russian retaliation is also likely to hurt Western espionage capabilities in Russia. The United States and its allies also use diplomatic covers for their spies.
He added: “On the other hand, during the Cold War, there were mechanisms of communication and control to avoid the escalation of incidents, to make sure that things would not get out of control when tensions would rise. Those mechanisms have been dismantled because people thought that the Cold War was finished, and so there was no reason to have this kind of precautions.” While relations were already strained, the nerve agent attack in Salisbury has frayed tempers so severely that mistrust between Moscow and the West has now spiked to a level not seen since a Soviet warplane shot down a Korean Airlines passenger jet from New York to Seoul in 1983. Soviet officials initially denied any role in downing the plane.
In often angry comments at a press briefing on Thursday, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman, Maria Zakharova, said Britain had no evidence to supports its accusations against Russia and compared them to a Nazi campaign to blame the Soviet Union for a 1933 fire at the German Parliament. The fire, exploited by the Nazis to rally support, played a crucial role in Hitler’s rise to power.
Ms. Zakharova said Washington and Britain had dragooned unwilling countries into their “anti-Russian campaign” through pressure and favors, which she did not detail.
Her remarks seemed aimed at containing the diplomatic crisis to Russia’s relations with London and Washington, the pillars of a trans-Atlantic alliance that Moscow, since the Cold War era, has accused of harboring a particular animus against Russia.
The Kremlin’s actions also signaled to the Russian public that their country was not at odds with the whole of Europe, which would be an alarming prospect for millions of Russians who travel each year to countries like France and Germany.
The closing of the consulate in St. Petersburg will please Russians and others who responded to an opinion poll conducted by the Russian Embassy in Washington. The embassy invited Russians to vote for which American consulate Moscow should close in response to the closing of Russia’s Seattle consulate, and St. Petersburg was by far the favorite choice.
Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and her government contend that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with one of an extremely powerful class of nerve agents known as Novichok, developed by Soviet scientists in the 1970s and ’80s. The British say they have solid evidence that Russia was probably behind the attack, and that Mr. Putin himself probably approved it.
The Skripals were found unconscious in a busy shopping area in Salisbury, where Mr. Skripal lives. He remains hospitalized in critical condition, but his daughter is showing improvement, British officials announced on Thursday. British officials say that hundreds of people could have been exposed to the nerve agent used against the Skripals.
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Thursday that Russia had called for a meeting next Tuesday of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to “establish the truth” with respect to what Russia refers to as “the so-called Skripal case.”