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Russia moves to expel 6 UK diplomats it accuses of espionage

A woman walks outside the British embassy building in Moscow on Sept. 13, 2024. Russia’s FSB security service on Sept. 13, 2024, announced that the accreditation of six British diplomats had been withdrawn for suspected espionage and for “threatening Russia’s security.” “As a measure of reprisals to the multiple unfriendly acts of London, the Russian foreign ministry ... has withdrawn the accreditation of six employees from the political department of the British embassy in Moscow,” it said in a statement, accusing them of carrying out “subversive activities and intelligence” gathering. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS)
By Henry Meyer Bloomberg News

Russian authorities on Friday stripped the accreditation of six diplomats at the U.K.’s embassy in Moscow and accused them of “spying and sabotage.”

The Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, said the diplomats at the embassy’s political department were engaged in work that threatened Russia’s national security, according to a statement posted on its website. Russia’s Foreign Ministry reposted the statement on its Telegram channel.

“We fully share the assessments” of the diplomats carried out by the FSB, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram. “This is not just about them carrying out activities incompatible with their status but engaging in subversive actions aimed at harming our people.”

The FSB’s accusations are “completely baseless,” a U.K. Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement, the PA news agency reported. The authorities in Moscow revoked the accreditation of six British diplomats in Russia last month, in response to actions taken by the government in London against Russian state-directed activity in the U.K. and Europe, according to the statement.

Russian state television showed details of the six staff, including their names, and said that their loss of accreditation meant they were being automatically expelled from the country.

Moscow announced the penalty on the day British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is due to hold talks with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, including on whether to allow Ukraine to carry out long-range strikes with western weapons against military targets deep inside Russia.

Relations between the U.K. and Russia have been locked in a spiral of confrontation for almost two decades since the poisoning of dissident Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. A 2018 nerve-agent attack on former agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury prompted the U.K. government to expel 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation. Tensions have escalated since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with the U.K. one of Kyiv’s main military backers.

In May, Russia and the U.K. expelled each other’s defense attaches in a tit-for-tat measure.

The six diplomats in the latest dispute had contacts with representatives of media outlets and non-government organizations closed down by Russia as “foreign agents,” the Vesti state TV channel said.