After several months of warning they’d retaliate if the US kept making hostile moves, Russia today did so, seizing a pair of US diplomatic properties, and ordering the US Embassy in Russia to reduce its staff to 455 by September.
The sites are both in Moscow, a warehouse and a dacha along the Moscow River which embassy staff use to host barbecues. Russia is giving the US until Tuesday, August 1, to be out of those two sites.
This is more or less direct retaliation for the move in December, in which the Obama Administration seized a pair of vacation houses owned by the Russian Embassy in the US. Russia at the time said they were holding off retaliation, hoping the Trump Administration would have a change of heart and return the properties. They did not.
The cap of 455 embassy staff appears to be a significant reduction, though exactly how many that amounts to isn’t totally clear. Russia isn’t singling out specific people who have to leave, but has complained recent that there are “too many” US spies in Moscow with embassy credentials.
Some are speculating this could expel in excess of 100 embassy staffers, an it’s retaliation to both the US expulsion of Russian embassy staffers back in December, and a growing array of US sanctions against Russia.
The US Embassy issued a statement saying they had expressed “strong disappointment and protest” to the Russian government. Since Russia’s been complaining about comparable moves from the US side for seven solid months, it’s unlikely Russia’s going to be too worried about their disappointment.
With a Rhino Senate and Rhino Congress hamstringing Trump on improving relations with Russia, Putin is right to do this.
If Russia really wants to tell us to sit and spin they should give the dacha to Edward Snowden.
Hugely disparate accounts of the NoKo missile’s range by the Pentagon and the Kremlin today. Either one has really bad equipment or one is lying.
The data claims are totally different. Putin is “this close” to cutting off all diplomatic connections to the U.S.
Perfect!
Seriously how can you tell the difference between a U.S spy and an Israeli spy …don’t they both work for Israhell???
The right track to what?
Arizona senator John McCain claims “We (the USG) didn’t do anything” to merit this retaliation. Then again, McCain has been making a good living from his incessant lies since his days as a very well fed POW.
According to this brief article at Fort Russ, the USG will have to send home 700 “diplomats”. One might think, with all those “diplomats” in Russia, that US-Russia relations would be somewhat less difficult. Perhaps Russian claims that almost all of the “diplomats” are spies contains more than a grain of truth. ttp://www.fort-russ.com/2017/07/we-didnt-do-anything-wrong-us-calls.html
The US Embassy issued a statement saying they had expressed “strong disappointment and protest” to the Russian government.
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Surely they must be joking?? Russia should have kicked out ALL US diplomats including the ambassador and recalled its ambassador the way we have been behaving. This sanction legislation is one of the stupidest, idiotic, boneheaded things Congress has ever done.
poking
Are the Russian’s still letting us transport supplies across Russian territory into Afghanistan? If so, that should definitely be put to a stop.