Russia announced on Friday that it had decided to expel six British diplomats. It accuses them of spying. The move reflects increasing tensions between the two nations.
The British Foreign Office says the “completely baseless” decision came weeks ago. The United Kingdom claims the action is a response to measures it took in May. The UK expelled a Russian defense attaché. (An attaché is a person who works for an ambassador.) It closed several Russian diplomatic properties in Great Britain which it says were used for spying. The UK also imposed a five-year time limit on all Russian diplomats in the country.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. (The notorious KGB arrested, imprisoned, and executed “enemies of the state” from 1954 to 1991.) The FSB says it has documents proving a British foreign office department was tasked with ensuring Russia’s “strategic defeat” in its war against Ukraine.
The New York Times reports that Russian state television identified the six diplomats and displayed their pictures. The TV report said the diplomats had met with Russian civil society activists.
The national newspaper of Russia, Izvestia, cited the FSB as saying that the British diplomats had recruited Russian teenagers, organized “provocations,” and held talks in the British ambassador’s Moscow home with “opposition figures.”
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova claims that the diplomats were carrying out “subversive actions aimed at causing harm to our people.”
These latest East-West tensions unfold as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visits Washington, D.C. He will meet with President Joe Biden. Those talks will include discussion of Ukraine’s request to use Western-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday that Kyiv’s use of long-range weapons would put NATO at war with Moscow.
Starmer says the United Kingdom does not seek conflict with Russia. “Russia started this conflict. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine. Russia could end this conflict straight away,” he told reporters.
Last week, Washington announced that Iran delivered ballistic missiles to Russia. U.S. and UK officials regard that step as an escalation of the war. Russia and Iran deny any such deliveries.
Expulsions of diplomats are more common since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Those include both Western envoys working in Russia and Russians in the West.
Last year, the Russian news outlet RBC reported that Western countries and Japan expelled a total of 670 Russian diplomats between the start of 2022 and October 2023. Moscow responded by expelling 346 diplomats. That was more than in the previous 20 years combined.
