A diplomatic spat between the U.S. and Russia has resulted in the removal of two American and two Russian diplomats. The United States expelled two Russian officials in response to a video-taped incident of an American diplomat being attacked by a policeman in Moscow in June. After the decision was announced, the Russian government said on Saturday that it had declared two US officials persona non grata, according to Russian state media. The decision to expel each other’s diplomats comes within an increasingly tough relationship between the two nations.
Relations between Russia and the US have chilled following Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, after which the west imposed sanctions against Russia.
The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, accused the US diplomats of being CIA agents. Spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Friday that the incident took place on June 6th and was the most recent example of American diplomats being mistreated and harassed in Russia. Kirby said that the Russian diplomats were expelled from the US on June 17th in response to the attack. “We are extremely troubled by the way our employees have been treated over the past couple years”, Kirby said. American ambassadors filed complaints about numerous “acts of harassment against their diplomatic staff that ranged from the weird to the downright scary”.
The situation started to be dangerous enough for Secretary of State John Kerry to bring it up during a March meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. “Putin made no promises about ending the harassment, which continued after Kerry returned to Washington,” Rogin reported.
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