Russia says two US diplomats expelled in tit-for-tat move

Moscow on Saturday said it had expelled two US diplomats in a retaliatory move after Washington turfed out two Russian officials over an attack on an American embassy worker last month.

“After their unfriendly step, two employees of the United States embassy had to leave Moscow,” Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

“They were declared persona non grata for activities incompatible with their diplomatic status,” he added.

Ryabkov accused the two US diplomats of being CIA agents and said that one of them had been involved in a brawl with a policeman in Moscow that sparked the tit-for-tat expulsions.

“We hope Washington recognizes all the same the perversity of its anti-Russian line. If they decide there to move further along the path of escalation it will not remain unanswered,” Ryabkov warned.

The US State Department on Friday announced that it had expelled two Russian officials over an attack on a US diplomat in Moscow last month by a policeman.

“On June 17, we expelled two Russian officials from the United States to respond to this attack,” department spokesman John Kirby said.

He said that on June 6, a Russian policeman attacked an accredited US diplomat entering the US embassy compound, after the US official identified himself. Kirby said the attack was “unprovoked and it endangered the safety of our employee.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC10fyQgNqo

Moscow, however, disputes that version of events and insists the US diplomat was a CIA agent who attacked the policeman as he tried to stop him to check his ID as he returned from a spying mission in the city.

“Instead of the CIA employee, who was in disguise, as we understand, it could have been anyone — a terrorist, an extremist, a suicide bomber,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told state-owned NTV television this week.

Kirby disputed those statements.

“The Russian claim that the policeman was protecting the embassy from an unidentified individual is simply untrue,” he told reporters.

A video of the scuffle, released earlier this week by NTV, shows a man exiting a taxi in an area resembling an embassy entrance and striding toward the doors. The guard bursts out of a sentry box and tackles the man, who is able to crawl through the entrance doors. Kirby declined to comment on the video.

The incident was the latest in what the State Department calls harassment and ill-treatment of American diplomats working in Russia. Moscow denies those accusations and says the US is spreading disinformation about Russia.

Ties between Moscow and Washington have sunk to Cold War levels in recent years over Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its support of separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine and its actions in Syria.