UK expels Russian diplomat and a diplomatic spouse in tit-for-tat response to expulsions in Moscow

It said Kelin was told that the UK will not stand for intimidation of British embassy staff and their families. | Photo: Pexels

LONDON (AP) — The U.K. government said Wednesday it has expelled a Russian diplomat and a diplomatic spouse in a tit-for-tat response to the expulsion of two British embassy staff in Moscow earlier this week.

The Foreign Office said it had summoned the Russian ambassador to the U.K., Andrei Kelin, to inform him of the expulsions, following what it described as an “increasingly aggressive and coordinated campaign of harassment against British diplomats" that it said represented an attempt to drive the British embassy in Moscow towards closure.

“We will not tolerate the Kremlin’s relentless and unacceptable campaign of intimidation, nor their repeated attempts to threaten U.K. security,” Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on X.

No timeframe for their departure was immediately available.

On Monday, Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, said in a statement quoted by the state news agency RIA Novosti that the two British diplomats expelled had provided false personal data, while seeking permission to enter the country, and had engaged in alleged intelligence and subversive activities that threatened Russia’s security. It didn’t offer any evidence.

According to the RIA Novosti report, a decision has been made to revoke the diplomats’ accreditations and they have been ordered to leave Russia within two weeks.

“The depths to which Russia sinks can only be met through strength," the U.K.'s Foreign Office said. “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 envoys working in Russia and Russians in the West — have become increasingly common since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

But embassy expulsions between the U.K. and Russia have been strained for even longer. Tensions escalated sharply in March 2018 when a former Russian intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, were poisoned in the southern England city of Salisbury with the Novichok nerve agent in what British authorities said was a targeted murder attempt coming from Moscow — a charge the Kremlin described as nonsense.