Russia yesterday moved to expel 35 US diplomats in a tit-for-tat response after US President Barack Obama unleashed a barrage of punishment against Moscow over alleged election interference.
Obama’s broadside over cyberattacks sent ties between Russia and the US — already at their worst since the Cold War — to a fresh low less than a month ahead of US president-elect Donald Trump taking charge.
The outgoing US leader on Thursday gave 35 alleged Russian “intelligence operatives” based at the nation’s embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco 72 hours to leave the US, and hit Russia’s military and domestic intelligence agencies with sanctions.
Photo: AFP
“We of course cannot leave these stunts unanswered. Reciprocity is the law in diplomacy and international relations,” Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov said in a televised statement, dismissing the US allegations as “groundless.”
Lavrov said his ministry had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare 31 employees at the US embassy in Moscow and four at the nation’s consulate in St Petersburg personae non gratae.
Russia is also seeking to ban US diplomats from using a holiday home and warehouse in Moscow, Lavrov said, after Obama ordered the closure of two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland.
Making good on a promise to punish Putin’s government for allegedly trying to tilt this year’s presidential election in Trump’s favor, Obama on Thursday unveiled a broad range of steps against Moscow including the diplomat expulsions.
US intelligence concluded that a hack-and-release of the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s staff e-mails was ordered by the Kremlin and was designed to put the Republican real-estate mogul in the Oval Office.
“I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of US officials and cyberoperations aimed at the US election,” Obama said in a statement.
In response to the hacks, dubbed “Grizzly Steppe” by US officials, Obama announced sanctions against Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, and the FSB — the KGB’s successor.
The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected the US accusations of cyberinterference and spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the Obama administration of trying to “definitively destroy US-Russia relations, which have already reached a low.”
Relations between Washington and Moscow have slumped to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, and Obama has previously imposed sanctions over Syria and Ukraine.
Peskov said ahead of Lavrov’s announcement that Putin would take into account the fact Obama only has three weeks left in office when responding, insisting Moscow would try not to act like a “bull in a china shop” in the hope of normalizing ties once Trump takes charge.
The moves by Obama could also raise further tensions with Trump, who has expressed his admiration for Putin and desire to improve ties with Russia. Trump has questioned whether Russia really tipped the electoral scale, painting Obama’s accusations as a thinly veiled effort by a Democratic president to delegitimize a Republican victory.
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