Russia hits back after U.S.
Senate sanctions vote
Moscow tells U.S. to cut
diplomatic staff by Sept. 1
Russia seizing two U.S.
diplomatic properties
U.S. President Donald Trump will
sign legislation that imposes sanctions on Russia, the White House said on
Friday, after Moscow ordered the United States to cut hundreds of diplomatic
staff and said it would seize two U.S. diplomatic properties in retaliation for
the bill.
The U.S. Senate had voted
almost unanimously on Thursday to slap new sanctions on Russia, forcing Trump
to choose between a tough position on Moscow and effectively dashing his stated
hopes for warmer ties with the country or to veto the bill amid investigations
in possible collusion between his campaign and Russia.
By signing the bill into law,
Trump can not ease the sanctions against Russia unless he seeks congressional
approval.
Moscow's retaliation,
announced by the Foreign Ministry on Friday, had echoes of the Cold War. If
confirmed that Russia's move would affect hundreds of staff at the U.S.
embassy, it would far outweigh the Obama administration's expulsion of 35
Russians in December.
The legislation was in part a
response to conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in
the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and to further punish Russia for its
annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Late on Friday, the White
House issued a statement saying Trump would sign the bill after reviewing the
final version. The statement made no reference to Russia's retaliatory
measures.
Russia had been threatening
retaliation for weeks. Its response suggests it has set aside initial hopes of
better ties with Washington under Trump, something the U.S. leader, before he
was elected, had said he wanted to achieve.
Relations were already languishing
at a post-Cold War low because of the allegations that Russian cyber
interference in the election was intended to boost Trump's chances, something
Moscow flatly denies. Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and
Russian officials.
The Russian Foreign Ministry
complained of growing anti-Russian feeling in the United States, accusing
"well-known circles" of seeking "open confrontation".
President Vladimir Putin had
warned on Thursday that Russia would have to retaliate against what he called
boorish U.S. behavior. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on
Friday that the Senate vote was the last straw.
Russian foreign minister
Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson by telephone that
Russia was ready to normalize relations with the United States and to cooperate
on major global issues.
Lavrov and Tillerson
"agreed to maintain contact on a range of bilateral issues", the
Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The ministry said the United
States had until Sept. 1 to reduce its diplomatic staff in Russia to 455
people, the number of Russian diplomats left in the United States after
Washington expelled 35 Russians in December.
'Extreme aggression'
It was not immediately clear
how many U.S. diplomats and other workers would be forced to leave either the
country or their posts, but the Interfax news agency cited an informed source
as saying "hundreds" of people would be affected.
A diplomatic source told
Reuters that it would be for the United States to decide which posts to cut, whether
occupied by U.S. or Russian nationals.
An official at the U.S.
Embassy, who declined to be named because they were not allowed to speak to the
media, said the Embassy employed around 1,100 diplomatic and support staff in
Russia, including Russian and U.S. citizens.
Russian state television
channel Rossiya 24 said over 700 staff would be affected but that was not
confirmed by the foreign ministry or the U.S. embassy.
The Russian Foreign Ministry's
statement said the passage of the bill confirmed "the extreme aggression
of the United States in international affairs".
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei
Ryabkov met outgoing U.S. ambassador John Tefft on Friday to inform him of the
counter measures, Russian news agencies reported. The U.S. Embassy said Tefft had
expressed his "strong disappointment and protest".
Most U.S. diplomatic staff,
including around 300 U.S. citizens, work in the main embassy in Moscow, with
others based in consulates in St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.
The Russian Foreign Ministry
said it was also seizing a Moscow dacha compound used by U.S. diplomats for
recreation, from Aug. 1, as well as a U.S. diplomatic warehouse in Moscow.
In December, the outgoing
Obama administration seized two Russian diplomatic compounds - one in New York
and another in Maryland - at the same time as it expelled Russian diplomats.
Trump and Putin met for the
first time at a G-20 summit in Germany this month in what both sides described
as a productive encounter, but Russian officials have become increasingly
convinced that Congress and Trump's political opponents will not allow him to
mend ties, even if he wants to.
The European Union has also
threatened to retaliate against new U.S. sanctions on Russia, saying they would
harm the bloc's energy security by targeting projects including a planned new
pipeline to bring Russian natural gas to northern Europe.
A European Commission
spokesman in Brussels said the bloc would be following the sanctions process
closely
No comments:
Post a Comment