The move comes after Britain’s foreign minister claimed it was “overwhelmingly likely” President Vladimir Putin directly ordered the attack.
LONDON — Russia retaliated against Britain on Saturday by expelling 23 diplomats after Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Moscow for the “brazen” poisoning of one of Moscow’s ex-spies and ordered a similar amount of Russian diplomats to leave Britain.
The move comes amid raised tensions between the two nations that have now reached Cold War-era levels of frostiness. Britain’s foreign minister on Friday claimed it was “overwhelmingly likely” President Vladimir Putin directly ordered the attack on Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, in Salisbury, England, on March 4.
“Our quarrel is with Putin’s Kremlin, and with his decision, and we think it is overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the U. K., on the streets of Europe, for the first time since the second World War,” Johnson told reporters in the British capital. Moscow strongly denied the allegation and called Johnson’s remarks “shocking” and “inexcusable.”
Russia’s foreign ministry said the diplomats in Moscow have one week to leave. It also ordered the closure of the British Council, a public information and educational center, in Russia, and halted the reopening of a British consulate in St. Petersburg.
Leaders from the United States, Germany and France joined the U. K. in accusing Russia of being behind the attack in a statement this week. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg followed that up Friday by saying that the incident reflected a Russian “pattern of reckless behavior” that includes cyberattacks and election meddling.
Britain has cancelled high-level bilateral contact with the Kremlin. In a separate action, the Trump administration issued sanctions on a number of Russian entities for a wide range of behavior, including attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Sergei Skripal moved to Salisbury after being jailed for passing Russian state secrets to British intelligence while working for the Russian government in the 1990s. His daughter, who lives in Moscow, was visiting him when the pair fell ill and were later found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury. They remain in a critical condition.
British police said Friday 131 people were exposed to trace amounts of the military-grade nerve agent used in the assault. None have shown any symptoms.
They also launched a murder investigation into the death of Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian businessman who was found dead in his London home on Tuesday.
Glushkov was strangled. While there is no evidence yet to link his killing to the Skripals’ case, police said they were “keeping an open mind” because of Glushkov’s nationality and his association with Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch and Putin critic who died under mysterious circumstances in 2013. Glushkov had previous convictions for money laundering and fraud and is the former deputy director of Russia’s state airline, Aeroflot.
