Russia expels 23 UK diplomats in retaliatory switch in thought row

Russia will expel 23 British diplomats in retaliation towards the UK’s expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats, Russia’s foreign ministry acknowledged.

The tit-for-tat expulsion follows after the poisoning of a ragged Russian thought and his daughter in London on March Four.

Blaming Russia for the attack, the UK acknowledged it would expel 23 Russian diplomats, the single biggest expulsion in higher than 30 years.

Skripal, sixty six, and his daughter Yulia, 33, had been came upon unconscious on a bench commence air a browsing centre in Salisbury, after they had been poisoned with a militia-grade nerve agent. 

Sergei Skripal, sixty six, and his daughter Yulia, 33, remain in severe situation in a sanatorium [Rex Features]

A ragged double agent, Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian brokers to British intelligence earlier than his arrest in Moscow in 2004. He became later sent to the UK in commerce for captured Russian spies.

Russia decided the British diplomats must toddle away Moscow inner per week, its foreign ministry acknowledged on Saturday, after a assembly with Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow.

Moscow also decided to discontinuance the British Council in Russia and to withdraw permission for Britain to commence a in vogue consulate in St Petersburg, the ministry acknowledged in a press launch.