Russia expels British diplomat over spying claims

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Russia has expelled another British diplomat after its FSB security service accused a Moscow embassy employee of providing false information when applying for diplomatic accreditation, claiming it had seen “signs of intelligence and subversive work”.

The announcement on Tuesday is the latest in a long list of expulsions of embassy staff by the UK and Russia in recent years.

Relations between both sides have deteriorated over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, London’s support for Kyiv and a string of incidents such as the use by Russian agents of the novichok nerve agent in an assassination attempt on British soil.

On Tuesday, the FSB issued a statement concerning the second secretary of the political department in the British embassy in Moscow. It claimed the man had “intentionally indicated false data when obtaining permission to enter our country, thus violating Russian law”.

The statement did not say what the allegedly false information concerned. The FSB also said it had seen “signs of intelligence and subversive work threatening the security of the Russian Federation have been revealed”.

The FSB named the staff member and state media outlets shared his picture. The staff member’s diplomatic accreditation had been cancelled, the agency said, meaning he would have to leave Russia in the next two weeks.

The UK Foreign Office has not commented on the expulsion.

Russia’s foreign ministry summoned the British ambassador to discuss the expulsion, the Tass state news agency reported, citing foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

The FSB said the man had arrived in Russia to replace one of six British embassy staff expelled from Moscow in August and September this year, also following accusations of espionage that Britain described at the time as “baseless”.

The six people were also accused of meeting with workers of Russian NGOs and independent media considered to be “foreign agents” by the Kremlin, such as the Nobel Prize-winning Novaya Gazeta newspaper, according to an FSB officer quoted on Russian state television at the time.

In May, the UK expelled Russia’s defence attaché in London for the first time since the cold war, describing him as an “undeclared military intelligence officer”, and closed several Russian diplomatic facilities, citing “malign activity”.

Diplomats attached to other western embassies in Moscow have also been subject to expulsion orders, and other western capitals have taken measures against Russian diplomatic staff in their countries.

Russia maintains a list of countries it considers officially “unfriendly” and occasionally responds to western sanctions by issuing entry bans to reporters, politicians and other individuals from those countries.