Moscow will expel dozens of US diplomats: senator

Moscow will expel at least 60 staff from US diplomatic missions in Russia in response to Washington’s decision to expel Russian diplomats, RIA news agency quoted a member of the upper house of the Russian parliament as saying.

The agency did not say on what the parliamentarian, Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the international affairs committee in the upper house, based his assertion. Government officials have yet to comment.

Dzhabarov’s comments came minuets after US and a bunch of EU member states announced their plans to expel different numbers of Russian diplomats from their countries, following a nerve agent attack on an ex-spy in the English city of Salisbury.

US President Donald Trump has authorized the expulsion of 60 alleged Russian spies from the US in support of UK.

Senior administration officials said that 48 “known intelligence officers” at the Russian consulate in Seattle and 12 more at the Russian mission to the UN have seven days to leave the country.

Meanwhile, EU President Donald Tusk also said Monday that 14 EU states are expelling Russian diplomats in support of Britain.

“As a direct follow-up to last week’s European Council decision to react to Russia within a common framework, already today 14 member states have decided to expel Russian diplomats,” Tusk told a news conference in Varna, Bulgaria.

The move came after British Prime Minister Theresa May addressed fellow European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels to urge them to support Britain’s assessment that Russia was to blame.

The 28 EU states issued a statement saying they agreed it was highly likely Russia was responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4, and ordered the recall of the bloc’s ambassador to Moscow.