DAY THE WORLD TURNED ON PUTIN
Triumph for Mrs May as 22 nations unite to kick out more than 100 Russian diplomats
VLADIMIR Putin was on the back foot last night after the West expelled more than 100 Russian spies in a show of support for Britain.
In an unprecedented diplomatic rebuke to Moscow, 22 countries said they would be joining the UK in expelling Russian agents in retaliation for the Salisbury attack.
The extraordinary Western response is a coup for Theresa May, who has spent days warning allies that they could face similar Russian aggression if they stand by.
The Prime Minister told MPs: ‘This is the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history. If the Kremlin’s goal is to intimidate and divide the Western alliance then their efforts have spectacularly backfired.
‘Today’s actions by our allies clearly demonstrate that we all stand shoulder to shoulder in sending the strongest signal to the Kremlin that Russia cannot continue to flout international law and threaten our security.’
The United States led the way with the expulsions, announcing that 60 Russian ‘diplomats’ would be booted out. The White House last night said the decision showed Britain and the US were ‘joined at the hip’ in their response to Russian aggression.
Sixteen EU countries said they would also be expelling Russian agents, with at least two more expected to follow in the coming days. The show of strength came as:
■ The Prime Minister revealed that more than 130 people in Salisbury may have been exposed to the Novichok nerve agent;
■ The Kremlin warned the world was entering a new Cold War as it hit out at those trying to ‘contain Russia’;
■ Mrs May told MPs that former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain critically ill. She added: ‘Doctors indicated that their condition is unlikely to change in the near future, and they may never recover fully.’
Yesterday’s wave of expulsions followed a diplomatic push by Mrs May, Foreign Secre- tary Boris Johnson and senior figures in the security services, who have shared intelligence with allies on the Russian threat.
The UK has already expelled 23 suspected Russian spies in a bid to ‘dismantle’ the Kremlin’s espionage network in this country. Russia replied by doing the same, closing a consulate and banning the work of the British Council.
Mrs May warned EU leaders last week that their own countries were ‘at risk’ unless they joined the UK in taking a strong stand.
She was rewarded yesterday when France, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Lithuania, Italy, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain, Estonia, Croatia, Finland, Latvia, Romania, Sweden and Hungary all announced they would be expelling Russian diplomats in response to the Salisbury attack.
Ireland and Belgium are expected to follow suit in the coming days. Non-EU countries responding to the UK’s call included the US, Canada, Ukraine, Albania and Norway.
European Council president Donald Tusk said ‘additional measures’ could not be excluded ‘in the coming days and weeks’.
Six countries are also planning state boycotts of the World Cup in Russia, it was claimed last night. Poland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Japan have all said their officials will not attend – with more expected to follow, The Sun reported.
Danish prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said: ‘Russia has gone too far. An assas-
‘Acts of aggression’
sination attempt in a European city with a Russian nerve agent is completely unacceptable.’
In addition to the expulsions, the White House said the US was also closing the Russian consulate in Seattle ‘due to its proximity to one of our submarine bases and Boeing’.
Ukraine, whose Crimean territory is still occupied by Russia, expelled 13 suspected spies.The country’s foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin said: ‘Today’s expression of solidarity should be just the beginning. Further strong and comprehensive actions are needed – Russia understands only the language of power.’
Mr Johnson, who has spent days in talks with his counterparts in Western allies, said: ‘ Today’s extraordinary international response by our allies stands in history as the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers ever and will help defend our shared security. Russia cannot break international rules with impunity.’
The Russian foreign ministry indicated it would carry out tit-for-tat expulsions, saying the response to the West would be ‘symmetrical’.
The Kremlin accused Britain of stirring up anti-Russian feeling based on ‘unfounded’ charges. A spokesman said: ‘This unfriendly move by this group of countries will not go unnoticed, and we will respond to it.’
In the Commons, Mrs May accused Moscow of treating the use of a military grade nerve agent in Europe ‘with sarcasm, contempt and defiance’.
She said the Putin regime had refused to say how its Novichok nerve agent came to be used in Salisbury.
The PM said Russia had instead produced 21 different and contradictory explanations, including claims the attack was conducted by Slovakia, Sweden, the Czech republic and even the UK.
‘For a nation state like Russia to resort again to peddling such preposterous and contradictory theories is unworthy of their people and their great history,’ she said.
Professor Anthony Glees, the director of security and intelligence studies at Buckingham University, said Russian espionage in the West would be ‘severely hampered’ by the wave of expulsions.
He said it was clear the UK Government had ‘additional secret evidence’ about the Salisbury incident which it had shared with allies and which had helped persuade them to act.
‘Just as the old Cold War generated a common purpose to resist Soviet aggression, this emerging new cold war will make the make the West realise the common threat they face,’ he said.
FOR a party which claims to repudiate all forms of racism, this was a day of shame.
In an unprecedented demonstration of anger and hurt, members of the Jewish community descended on Parliament to warn that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has become what one of their leaders described as ‘a sewer of anti-Semitism’.
And this was no fringe event. Organised by the Board of Deputies – the main body representing British Jewry – it was the Jewish mainstream taking to the streets.
Most had never demonstrated before. But they had to stand up to a party which provides cover for a whole range of loathsome anti-Semites – from holocaust deniers to peddlers of vile Jewish conspiracy theories worthy of 1930s Nazism.
In any decent organisation, such bigots would be expelled. In Labour they are not only tolerated, they’re embraced.
Mr Corbyn claims to regret the ‘pockets of anti- Semitism’ within the party but these are just weasel words.
For decades, anti-Zionism and support for Palestinian terrorists have been part of Mr Corbyn’s hard-Left credo. And far too often, that has looked like anti-Semitism.
The latest example is his support for a disgusting mural in east London, portraying caricature Jewish bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of what appear to be naked slaves. It’s an image of which Goebbels would have been proud.
Mr Corbyn belatedly apologised but his words were hollow. In his friendship with Hamas, Hezbollah and extremist clerics, he has an appalling record of giving succour to those who hate the Jewish people.
If he really wanted to promote ‘a kinder, gentler politics’, Mr Corbyn would kick these ghastly anti-Semites out of his party. By failing to do so, he gives them a deeply sinister respectability.